Invalid Doctor
by SofiaDragon
Summary: Mashup of ASiP and the Un-aired Pilot episode, with some reworking of backstory to make this a canon-adjacent AU. John Watson is Bi - Sherlock is Demi - the boys have issues - all that is canon anyway. Slow burn Romance, multiple parts planned. Will be cross-posted to AO3 under the same penname. Slowly diverges from the episodes, so anything that I skip through is unchanged.
1. Watson's POV

**Invalid Doctor**

 **Invalid Deductions**

There are a few different methods for staying sane in a warzone.

Escapism was popular. Some of his fellow soldiers read high fantasy novels, or watched every movie they could. Others had letters full of daydreams about 'when I get home.' A few indulged in chemical vices, sometimes to unsafe extremes, but usually within both the law and reasonable parameters. There was even that one fresh recruit who (due to an idiot putting gray water where it didn't belong, a very loud portable speaker attached to a solar-powered screen, and an excitable Irishman who many thought ought to stop playing video games and take up voice acting) managed to introduce an overfull medical tent of groggy men to the concept of "Let's Play" videos. He made most of them cry some days later when they reached the emotional highpoint of the Undertale series they had all gotten hooked on. It let them all ignore how miserable dysentery was to deal with for a few hours. Escape is healthy in moderation, and as long as it wasn't solely found in the bottom of a bottle.

Captain John Hamish Watson, MBBS, MRCS, most recently attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers on a mission to set up a new field hospital in freshly re-claimed Afghani territory, didn't go in for escapism much. Sure, he liked a good movie, who didn't? He was also a bit of a slag, escaping into nights of passion where he showed off his army-toned body, but mostly he fell into the realist set. One of those who spent all their free time training, talking shop, or in leisure activities that were either horribly cliche or honed work-related skills. Drinking, fucking, and training their way through the ever-growing piles of stress was the manly way to go about military service for generations, after all.

Captain Watson spent hours at the range when on a proper base, hanging out with the snipers when they were sizing each other up and trading techniques with the other soldiers who spend far more time on the front lines than any member of the RAMC ever should. In the beginning, he hadn't minded being the man who came in last for their pissing contests. It saved someone else's ego and was a fair bit of fun. A doctor's pay grade meant buying a round at the end for his loss didn't hurt too much. Later, he placed bets and won a fair chunk of money surprising the 'real soldiers' with how good a 'squishy non-combatant' could shoot. When stationed closer to the actual action, he had a steady stream of books to read. Thanks to a network of libraries in America somewhere determined to 'support the troops' by regularly sending mixed boxes of books to coalition forces, the available reading list was rather diverse. The fiction books are always snatched up quickly, but that is fine. Watson finds the random assortment of non-fiction books he picks up are easier to read without getting distracted by the weird way Americans use spelling and punctuation than anything less cerebral. Getting pulled out of a narrative to ponder basic grammar wasn't a good time, but he could ignore it if he was already puzzling out some obscure bit of philosophy or history. He spends his leave time in Continuing Professional Development whenever he is back on his native soil, and not just in classes that will get him to his surgery fellowship. The classes and conferences weren't all work, not the way he saw them, anyway: there was always some group he could hook onto that took a trip to a cozy pub or a nice restaurant afterward, and the Captain was a personable sort. He'd made quite a few friendly and professional acquaintances over the years. That this method of staying busy at home kept Harriet from being drunk when she called or visited as much as she normally would have been is a double benefit. Even during those months where she is at her worst, she still has enough self-awareness not to embarrass the both of them in a place full of his fellow medical professionals - a good indicator she hadn't hit rock bottom as much as a statement on the power of a room full of well-pressed suits. He's lost track of how many times she's promised to stop drinking. He stopped believing her sometime after their father drank himself to death.

The men who detach from their surroundings don't last long. Those who put blinders on, who seem to ignore it all: those are the ones Captain Watson worries about, the ones who trigger the parts of his training aimed at spotting developing mental illnesses. Some of the medics coming in fresh from training often look to the 'workaholic' types like John, but there is a healthy and an unhealthy way to go about that sort of single-minded dedication. He'd seen enough of it, lived enough of it, that he could spot the difference. The older set agreed with him that this new-age rejection of machismo might work in some cases, but didn't apply as much to the sort of person who volunteered for military service. There was never a lack of work in the military, so it was the perfect place for a workaholic. They thrived like flowers in the sun. No, it was those who detached that got out quickly, either through some form of discharge or in a box. Detachment, as a coping mechanism, was the true danger.

Living in a bedsit in London, John can feel himself detaching. He is meant to be recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, the rushed surgery that affected the nerves there, the osteomyelitis that got into his thigh, and an immune system so run-down by the lot that he'd caught the flu and two colds since he'd returned to London from the Middle East despite years of regular vaccinations and fairly sterile living arrangements for most of his recovery. Recovery is meant to include improvement and he certainly hasn't gotten much of that. The world around him is becoming blurrier in steady increments. He knows it is a bit not good. He knows that the time it took them to haul him off the battlefield contained some unmeasured period where his brain wasn't quite getting enough blood, and that was when the fog and the infection first got in. His left hand and sometimes his forearm tremble on bad days from the nerve damage, and his right leg steadfastly refuses to function reliably despite there not being anything obviously wrong with it mechanically speaking. That was a bit not good as well. He didn't blame Bill at all, he'd even had a coffee with the nurse he'd served alongside and thanked the man for saving his life. Bill had gotten married since, which was good for him. Getting on with life, having things happen to him was good. John wasn't getting any of that, either. The therapist meant to help him adjust to civilian life after signing up for an Army Medical Corps cadet program at age 16 with plans to stay there until he was ready for retirement is decidedly not helping. All of her suggestions sound like they are straight out of whatever trendy, new-age, metro-sexual theory those young idiots he didn't get on with were spouting. He isn't sure how many mentally sound soldiers she's ever met, but he doubts they would crowd up his small room if they all came visiting. Trust issues, she writes down one day. _No_ , John thinks as he reads her notes upside-down, _I just don't trust you_.

John supposes there are a lot of ways to stay sane while outside a warzone, but he's spent so little of his life there he simply doesn't know what they are or how to go about learning them. God knows he didn't have decent role models for a healthy civilian life before he dove head-first into the military lifestyle. Six months into his new civilian life, three months after the Army officially gave up on him recovering enough to be useful, one month after his last overnight stay in a hospital bed, he is on one of his therapist-prescribed recreational walks - a task he completes with the air of a man ripping off a particularly stubborn plaster from a particularly delicate bit of skin. Mike Stanford recognizes him as he passes a bench outside Bart's. John has the same reaction he has had whenever anyone who used to know Captain Watson spots him with his cane. He hates his weakness, and hates them for seeing it on display, and pushes all that unpleasantness down because he has always been professional and polite unless there was great cause to be otherwise. Changing that, too, would just be another defeat. Swallowing it all down, the world goes a little fuzzier, a little grayer, and he is barely aware of what he is talking about.

John is so detached from the nearly-automatic polite small talk that he might as well be drugged. He hardly sees his surroundings as Mike leads him inside Bart's and into one of the lab rooms to meet some other lost soul who can't afford to rent a flat in London on his own. There's a skinny man there; the details take time to fully register. Tight suit jacket and expensive jeans - dressed a bit posh for lab work but not ridiculously so - just a little upper class and not some office worker dabbling or running errands then. Striking features, sharp cheekbones under pale skin topped with black-brown curly hair well past the length John would ever let his own reach that made him look about twelve... and somehow, he knows entirely too much about John's life for someone who has supposedly never met him. John has the impression the younger man is eager to escape their company even as he seems to take it as a given that John will agree to rent a flat with him, which seems contradictory since he'd presumably need to enjoy John's company to want to share living space. In fact the taller man is so eager to rush off he nearly forgets to mention his name or the address of the flat he's had his eye on before dashing out the door, leaving John with a wink he isn't sure how to interpret and a feeling not dissimilar from the morning after he'd shared a bottle of bathtub whiskey with his college dorm mates. He never did figure out how he'd gotten that far from his preferred Urban habitat. After the fast-talking man leaves, Mike explains that Sherlock Holmes can do that to anybody, but Mike doesn't know how. It's just something Holmes can do, and Mike seems to find it mildly amusing. As they are parting ways Mike seems more like he's shown John something amusing to distract him than something actually helpful.

It is only after he has gotten back to the horrible little room he's been put away in that his mind completely catches up to the events of the day. He fires up his laptop and plugs the man's name into a search engine. It is distinctive enough that John figures there aren't likely to be many hits, and he is right. The top result is a website titled The Science of Deduction and John is shocked at the late hour when he finally stops reading to use the latrine. There is something about a drugged-out son of a lesser blue-blood family getting in a bit of trouble a few years back in the search results as well, but that is a William Sherlock Scott Holmes and so John dismisses it. As a common man with the uncommon middle name Hamish, John knows how some odd old family names can get passed around out of tradition even well after any high-society connection has been watered down to nothing. William could be Sherlock's cousin, and this Sherlock didn't seem the type to blunt his senses with drugs. Not with the way he flaunted his brainpower and observational skill on his website.

Using small but telling details to deduce the specifics of people's lives was both an interesting idea, and an incredibly impressive talent to have if Holmes could do it as fast as it seemed he did when he first met John. He'd heard of cold reading before, in the context of fortune tellers and magicians claiming to be psychic, but never thought of how it could be used for any practical purposes. It also seemed a bit implausible that anyone could take in that many details at once, but he'd have ample time to get the man to explain himself tomorrow. John spent the morning thinking on and off about what sort of career the man had. The text he sent using John's phone, 'If brother had green ladder, arrest brother. - SH,' implied some involvement in law enforcement. Holmes certainly seemed to think that, given whatever he knew about John from his deductions, Stanford's silent recommendation was enough of a reason to rent a flat together. Except that Stanford had led John to Holmes like he was showing off some curiosity to lighten John's mood rather than a solid option, and John was at a severe disadvantage in the matter of knowing who his potential flatmate was.

Perhaps it was assumed to be a very temporary arraignment? Something while they were both between things, restarting their professional lives after a bit of upset? Unfortunately, John was a left-handed junior surgeon whose dominant hand failed him regularly due to very real nerve damage and whose misbehaving right leg had days when even the cane was barely enough to keep him standing. The argument over it being psychosomatic or brain damage was moot so long as it kept failing him. Steady well-paying work was going to be hard to come by and keep up under the circumstances. Never mind trying to squeeze his way into one of the highly competitive positions where he could finish his training as a trauma surgeon and get that fellowship he'd wanted. No nepotism, money, or high-powered connections to grease the way for him, which is why he'd signed up for the armed forces in the first place. Aside from a bit of brown-nosing that could have gotten him more suitable orders and seen him promoted above Captain before now, the RAMC's program was almost completely merit- and training-based. He'd lost all the valuable connections he'd made when he was discharged. Ignoring for a moment that his left hand wasn't fit to stitch up a rag-doll, he didn't have any chance of finishing up his training without a long and highly political detour to get his foot in. Of course, he'd originally started accepting the occasional detours his career had taken as a way to please some of the top brass, so in a way the brown-nosing he did do ended up delaying his surgeon's training instead of speeding it along, though the challenging assignments looked great on his record. The lack of a pay rise hadn't seemed terribly important as he was able to comfortably stash away a rather large percentage of his pay into long-term investments as it was. At the time, he'd been enjoying the excitement of the posts too much to complain. Now, knowing that if he hadn't been shot the last orders he'd been given would have seen him certified and promoted to Major in less than six months made the whole situation that much harder to bear.

Even if he ignored his surgeon's training and managed to get a position as a GP, people didn't like taking health advice from sick doctors. John wasn't about to hang his Army Cross up on the wall as a tacit explanation. Some people would consider it an invitation to talk about it, and John wasn't keen on that at all. Perhaps once Holmes moved on it would be the start of a series of flat-mates for John, but that was a young man's game wasn't it? He didn't relish the idea of sharing space with a string of university students or managing a sub-lease when an empty bedroom for too long would mean a hasty relocation. A more stable situation would be better, something that would hold for a few years at least so that all John's long-term savings would open up. Stupid investment fees, stupid financial advice having him stuff all his money in long-term accounts, stupid occasionally-thieving sister forcing him to guard his checkbook by keeping the balance on his primary spending account as low as was feasible. Sure, today was a good day, unlike yesterday when he'd been hobbling around at a snail's pace. He could probably do without the cane for a bit if he really tried today. That was the way of mobility issues even when they weren't 'all in your head,' but it was hardly enough of a sure thing to leave the cane behind.

221B Baker Street turned out to be a well-kept brick building with a little sandwich shop on the street level. Holmes arrived in a taxi wearing his expensive coat over a suit just as John was walking up in his worn jacket, jumper and jeans. There had been an advert up for the place at some point saying it came fully furnished, but the website had it listed as taken and there was no figure published for the requested rent. An upside-down real estate sign in the window above the sandwich shop told John that the flat wasn't properly on the market at the moment. Holmes stepped out of a cab wearing a rather nice suit just as John was coming down the block from the nearest Tube station. They exchanged greetings, each awkwardly glad to see the other in the way of perfect strangers who expect to be stood up. Holmes insisted on being called Sherlock as they rung the bell, explaining briefly that he'd secured a discounted rate by ensuring the landlady's husband was convicted overseas of murder. Right then.

The flat itself was on the first floor of the building. The main area was quite nice, and John said as much. The one-wall eat-in kitchen and spacious, irregularly shaped sitting room were separated by glass-backed shelving that made the place feel bright and open even stuffed as full of odds and ends as it was. The other walls were covered in slightly dated, but rather pleasant, patterned wallpaper with a very attractive fireplace on the wall opposite the entrance. A pair of armchairs, side tables, and a coffee table were nestled in front of the fireplace beneath a layer of boxed papers in various states of disarray. A couch hid around a corner from the entrance with a small TV and writing desk between the two seating areas in the odd shaped room, also covered in a thin layer of odds and ends that would need to be cleared away. The furniture was a mis-matched jumble that spanned several decades of popular style, but similar colors made them work well together. Bohemian, John thought the proper term was, or maybe eclectic; a bit lived-in and that was quite attractive after the sterile matchboxes he'd been living in. It was when Sherlock admitted that the many boxes of stuff crowding up the place and the copious amount of chemistry supplies on the dining table were his own possessions - that he'd moved in already - that finally brought the younger man's odd eagerness to have John move in with him to John's full attention. There was something off about how Sherlock reacted to the possibility of John not wanting to move in due to the clutter. It wasn't Sherlock's hurried attempt to tidy up (particularly given how comically ineffectual it was) as much as the stunned moment just before and the slightly frantic and mechanical way the man went about trying to fix it.

That germinating idea was quickly pushed aside by the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, making assumptions about how many bedrooms they would need. That was certainly an alternate solution to the mystery of why Sherlock seemed so keen on John moving in, but despite having had plenty of success in that area over the years he rather doubted Sherlock found him terribly appealing. He hadn't been dressed to impress when they met at Bart's, a depressed mood colored with embarrassment was the opposite of sexy, and neither of them had done anything that was identifiable as flirting. John had enjoyed a lot of female company in the bedroom, something that was well-known about him among his old buddies in and around London, so if Sherlock had somehow gotten a bit of gossip about his potential flatmate beforehand it wouldn't have led him in that direction. Not that he was bigoted, not at all. It was just that anyone who was a bit (or a lot) bent in the Army tended to keep their mouths shut about it and never mind how tolerant the official stance on such things was. It had been half a decade for John, and anyway, he was fairly certain there wasn't anyone currently on this continent that knew how open-minded John was on that front let alone any telling detail still lingering about his person all these years later. So, that theory was properly out.

"Sherlock, the mess you've made!" Mrs. Hudson moaned when she caught sight of the currently unusable kitchen, distracting her from her ruminations on John and Sherlock's relationship status. The older woman snatched up a bin and stalked into the cluttered room to try and make sense of the jumble covering the worktops and table. John mused that the bin was probably the worst tool to take up in the battle between the Kitchen and Chemistry Lab that was underway in that room, as everything John could identify was expensive glassware and related equipment.

John took another look around while the mess was being sorted through. Despite the outer door to the street specifying 221B, the foyer below was clearly shared between the flats A, B, and C. This flat used what was clearly an original main stairway, the bottom stair only a few steps from the outer door. Accessing the bath was a study in squeezing modern utilities into and carving apartments out of a building that wasn't originally designed for either. A solid door next to a window on the back of the building led into the tiled bathroom from a short hallway _outside_ the main door of the flat. A second, frosted glass door led to the first floor bedroom from there. The stair did a ninety degree turn every half-story, so it wasn't exactly wide open to the foyer, but the upstairs resident would still be crossing the semi-shared space of the open stairwell to get to it. A quick trip downstairs to assess how much traffic would be in the stairwell showed John the door to 221A, a door into the back garden, and a door in the very back of the foyer labeled 221C. Mrs. Hudson lived in 221A, which she told them on the way up was tucked around the sandwich shop on the ground floor. So, the door to C either lead up to the third floor via an old servant's stair or down to a basement, meaning they wouldn't be sharing the stairwell with the top floor neighbors after all. Still, he'd have to invest in a less worn-out dressing gown or risk occasionally scandalizing the rest of the building. He carried on through the bath into the first floor bedroom which also attached to the oddly shaped sitting room on the main level near the couch. It was done up in plain paint the same pea-green color that accented the bath with decent enough furniture currently buried under another load of semi-unpacked boxes and open garment bags. It was on the smaller side for a primary bedroom even when John considered that the clutter likely made it feel smaller, though it had a generously-sized closet. A closet that already had more clothes hanging in it than John owned. Sherlock was either a clotheshorse or a pack rat, possibly both. All told, the layout of the first floor was essentially an uneven horseshoe with the stairwell in the middle and a few extra nooks and corners in every room as leftovers from the place being carved up and modernized. Not terrible for a London flat.

Unfortunately, the second bedroom being up another flight of stairs was a bit of an issue that would need ironing out since Sherlock seemed intent on taking this one. The high ceilings in the Victorian-era building were a great contrast to the closed-in little box John had been living out of since his release from hospital, but seventeen steps per floor was asking a lot of his leg on a bad day. John climbed up to the other bedroom to know what sort of argument he'd have to construct. The stairs terminated at a landing with only one door, though from the way the landing was shaped there used to be another door at some point in history that had been blocked off. The upstairs bedroom was painted a soothing blue, had its own toilet attached (the location of which explained why the landing looked like it did,) and was a fair bit larger than the downstairs bedroom. A bit spacious for the heart of the city in general, even. It had slightly mismatched furniture likely collected over several decades just like the rest of the flat: a standard bed, two nightstands: one modern glass and steel and one weathered oak, an Austin Powers inspired dressing table, and a large more modern-looking storage cabinet that might have come from Ikea. It also sported a rather solid old wooden desk against one wall that the other bedroom didn't have. Its closet was diminutive by comparison, and John had a strong feeling the extensive collection of clothes downstairs had more to do with Sherlock's preference for the smaller room than anything else. John honestly would have preferred this room if it wasn't for his leg, as it had a nice view of the back garden and the privacy of his own toilet and sink was a serious bonus.

He came back down to see Sherlock still trying to somehow make all his assorted belongings fit into one side of the room and failing miserably. John dropped a pillow sporting the union jack onto the shorter of the two chairs before going to sit in it. If Sherlock was as observant and clever as he seemed to think he was in his website's essays, he'd probably take that as a hint that John wouldn't mind if he took up more than exactly half the space so long as John's fewer possessions had a place and their shared space was still functional. If not, John would just have to say it outright, but first they'd each have to finish sorting out who the other was and which bedroom they'd be taking, among other fine points. No point in needlessly giving up a potential bargaining chip, after all.

"Oh, I, um, looked you up on the Internet last night," John said to Sherlock as he settled into the chair. It was as good a topic as any to start with. Early on in his career a positively ancient doctor had passed down some hard-earned wisdom to John: There is no one who gets lied to more often than an army doctor, and no one more prone to hide weakness than a pumped-up macho soldier with a problem less severe than a severed limb. The advice had proved true. Prior to getting his trauma specialization and unless John's patients were carried in, very few of them admitted to having an issue without a bit of coaching. Even then people often left out details or assumed that half their symptoms were unrelated, a problem John had been dealing with since his very first day on the job during medical school. Spotting the important cues and getting people to talk was a big part of the job. John was good at that, before, and it was frustrating as hell to have lost so much of that thanks to some amoral fuck-wipes shooting a rocket propelled grenade at a red cross convoy. Sherlock's behavior had cleared away some of the fog that had taken up residence in John's brain, his ability to read people waking up a little out of necessity in the face of the man's oddness.

"Anything interesting?" Sherlock asked, shoving his hands into his pockets in what John registers as a pose. What sort of pose eludes him for a moment, though he is used to knowing these things straight off.

"Found your website. The Science of Deduction," John answers carefully, a brief pause giving himself as much time to think as was polite. Tense, Sherlock was tense, perhaps because people who look him up often find the mess William got into and ask uncomfortable questions?

"What did you think?" Tense with nerves, or perhaps eager to impress? The man was a bit public school, with a lot of expensive belongings, but looking to cut costs with a flat-share. There were plenty of spare sons of such-and-such blue-blooded line in the army, used to a certain standard of living before being weaned - or kicked - off the family bankroll. John was familiar with the breed. A bit of a show-off, then? John could work with that. John nudges his way past the posed stance Sherlock hid behind by scoffing quietly at Sherlock's question with calculated precision. Nervous, clearly, and very concerned about John's reaction going by the way the man's expressive face crumbles at the dismissal.

"You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and – what was it? – a retired plumber by his left hand," John says incredulously.

"Yes; and I can read your military career by your face and your leg, and your brother's drinking habits by your mobile phone," Sherlock fires back.

"The state of the place already," John hears Mrs. Hudson muttering as she came back out of the kitchen, categorizing things as best she can.

"How?" John prompts, as that was what he'd been after with the first question.

"You read the article," Sherlock dismisses the question and goes back to rummaging through his stacks of boxes. Well, the brunette went from from showing off to clamming up fast enough John might have to treat Sherlock for whiplash. The corner of the room the skinny man had been tidying looks more of a mess now than it had been when they walked in, though the clutter might be slightly more condensed in its disorganized heap. John estimates the chances that Sherlock grew up in a house with a maid are rather high. Now that is the sort of deduction he can follow, as for the article explaining how Sherlock did what he did...

"The article was absurd," John declares.

"But I know about his drinking habits. I even know that he left his wife," Sherlock's answer is petulant, almost whining. _He acts a bit childish in general, actually,_ John thinks.

"What about these suicides then, Sherlock? Thought that'd be right up your street. Been a third one now," Mrs. Hudson interrupts, walking over with a newspaper in hand.

"Yes, actually. Very much up my street," is the slightly grumpy reply, though something catches his eye out the window and the taller man trails off, distracted.

"Can I just ask: what is your street?" John says, hoping to get at least one straight answer out of him.

"There's been a fourth, and something is different this time," Sherlock says to himself. Someone hurries up the stair - did they even knock? - and Sherlock speaks before they come through the open door. "Where this time?"

"Brixton, Lauriston Gardens. Will you come?" John hears a man answer from the landing outside the door.

"Who's on forensics?" Sherlock asks.

"It's Anderson," the man replies, stepping into John's field of view. A bit older, graying, and dressed respectably enough. He doesn't even glance John's way.

"Anderson won't work with me."

"He won't be your assistant."

"But I need an assistant."

"Will you come?" The entire exchange is fast, almost rote, but John does catch that Sherlock has done something off-script judging by the other man's face.

"Not in a police car. I'll be right behind," Sherlock agrees, his face painted with the same mild expression he'd had since spotting what must have been a police car with flashing lights out of the window.

"Thank you." The man looks around and finally spots John and Mrs. Hudson. With a polite nod he turns and leaves the room. Biting his lip to hold back a delighted smile, Sherlock waits until the man is properly gone before raising his fists triumphantly and leaping into the air like his favorite team just won the regional and he'd had a sizable bet on the match.

"Oh! Brilliant! Thought it was going to be a dull evening," Sherlock exclaims as he puts on his coat, turning briefly to John. "Honestly, can't beat a really imaginative serial killer when there's nothing on the telly." Leaping across the room while he puts his scarf on, traversing the coffee table in the process, he goes to dig something out from a box. "Mrs. Hudson, I may be out late. Might need some food."

"I'm your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper," she says gently.

"Something cold will do," he says absently as he inspects a small pouch of instruments before tucking them into one of his pockets. "John, make yourself at home. Er, have a cup of tea. Don't wait up."

"Look at him, dashing about! My husband was just the same," Mrs. Hudson giggles at Sherlock as he bounds out of the room, full of energy. "But you're more the sitting-down type, I can tell." John just sighs and sinks into the chair. He can almost feel the haze coming back over him now that he doesn't have anything to focus directly on. It's ridiculous, he never needed to be... to be _entertained_ like this before. It had been frustrating him for months, making him feel like a child. There had always been something coming up, always something to do or anticipate either in his regular duties or through one of the favors he did for the brass. Or even just going out with the boys on the hunt for some attractive company. "I'll make you that cuppa. You rest your leg."

"Damn my leg!" The words burst out of him involuntarily. An old woman fussing over him when he absolutely doesn't need it is just a bit too much for a moment, but his manners come back in the next second. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just that sometimes this bloody thing..." John finishes his sentence by smacking his bad leg with his cane.

"I understand, dear; I've got a hip," Mrs. Hudson forgives him gently and goes back into the kitchen.

"A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you," he corrects himself automatically, grabbing the copy of the Times off the side table that she'd set down. He hears Mrs. Hudson turn abruptly and move back toward the door heading downstairs, wisely giving up on preparing tea amid the riot of Sherlock's chemistry equipment and letting John finish regaining his composure.

"Just this once, dear. I'm not your housekeeper," he registers her words, even says another something in reply that comes from his hazy stock of polite statements, but his attention is caught by a picture of the man that just came to fetch Sherlock on the front page. The headline and caption mention the recent set of serial suicides Mrs. Hudson was talking about. John thinks that someone had mentioned them to him last week sometime, or he'd overheard someone talking about it. Perhaps when he'd stopped into a coffee shop to rest his leg while out walking? Well, the man who fetched Sherlock is Detective Lestrade, and in charge of the investigation. John is just starting to read the article when he hears something behind him.

"You're a doctor." John looks over to the doorway expectantly. With the way the man assumes things, like how it is perfectly obvious that he will get the bedroom with the shorter climb and that John would agree to move in to this flat with him before john had even seen it, he doubts the man is prone to stating the bleeding obvious without significant cause. "In fact, you're an army doctor."

"Yes," John confirmed, standing up and setting the paper aside.

"Any good?"

"Very good," John assured, hoping this was going where he thought it was going. Hoping the absurd website wasn't a load of horse shit. Hoping that Sherlock had looked him up as well and could fill in the blanks of what John's military career was actually like. Hoping that someone who could assess and handle people the way John could would be helpful to have around. Hoping more than anything that he could keep the fog out of his head long enough to be useful again.

"Seen a lot of injuries, then; violent deaths." _Asking a doctor if he's going to vomit over seeing a battered corpse, really?_ John thinks, but keeps his answer simple.

"Well, yes."

"Bit of trouble too, I bet," Sherlock prods, and he's either stalling or intentionally being as dramatic and drawn out as possible.

"Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much," John says quietly, giving the proper answer his therapist would approve of, but with rather the wrong inflection.

"Want to see some more?" He finally gets to the point.

"God, yes!" John gasps out like a prayer. Sherlock spins on his heel and John is already following him at a decent speed out the door and into a waiting cab.

#

 **Taxi to a Death**

In the taxi John finally gets a proper explanation for how Sherlock knew so much about him without being told anything. It's not the most straightforward way of thinking, and John is certain that those little details could mean other things.

"There you go, you see – you were right," Sherlock says at the end of his explanation.

"I was right? Right about what?" John asks, winding the conversation back and picking through the details again, feeling a bit slow and not minding it for the first time in months.

"The police don't consult amateurs," Sherlock brags as he looks out of the side window. After a moment's thought John sees that the real magic is in how Sherlock put the details together. The tan lines likely don't mean anything so specific without John's comment to Mike, his haircut, or his limp. The clues on the phone need the context of John looking for a flatshare in order to inform Sherlock about John's relationship to Harry. Sure, Sherlock gets Harry's gender wrong, but Sherlock has no context for that, no indication of the truth one way or the other so he goes with society's default assumption. It is all interlocking, and it is the complexity of that interconnected reasoning that blows John away. To have that many little details in focus at the same time, and to put it all together so quickly, is astounding.

"That was ... amazing," John says when he's finished processing Sherlock's explanation. Sherlock looks back at him suddenly, looking at John in interest.

"Do you think so?" he asks despite himself.

"Of course it was! It was extraordinary! It was quite extraordinary!" The praise clearly startled Sherlock, and he seems to preen under the attention once he is sure it is genuine.

"That's not what people usually say," the man confirms unnecessarily.

"What do they usually say?" John asks the obvious question.

"'Piss off'!" Sherlock scoffs, and they share a bit of a laugh. Well, it could be a little invasive, John supposes, and if Sherlock felt like it he could probably air people's dirty laundry quite easily.

Sherlock demonstrates exactly that ability when the plainclothes sergeant Donovan and the forensics lead Anderson greet him with open hostility. John assumes there is a lot more evidence than scuffed knees and deodorant, possibly related to a history of behavior Sherlock has seen over his acquaintance with the pair, to support the accusation that they are having an affair. The delivery was a bit hostile, but so was Anderson calling Sherlock's ability magic tricks and Donovan calling him a freak without any provocation. That they didn't even look at John more than half a second then asked Sherlock to explain his presence as if John was a leashed dog, and then didn't even try to talk to John to get their answers after Sherlock's flippant dismissal, was more than a little demeaning. The two were certainly making a foul first impression.

John slips out of his jacket and into the coverall and gloves Sherlock hands him, vague memories of forensic procedures gleaned from pop culture and a couple true-crime novels reminding John that contaminating a crime scene is a big deal. Suiting up wasn't wholly unfamiliar, he had to be sterile during surgery after all, and he deftly slipped into two pairs of gloves without contaminating the outside. The police procedure going on around him was unfamiliar: The few times he'd had to deal with RMPs he'd been removing an injured soldier from a scene as quickly as possible, usually avoiding alcohol-scented vomit as much as he could along the way. They head up the stairs of the disused building to the murder scene. There are a few signs of renovation visible from the stairway, but the building clearly hasn't been properly inhabited for some weeks. Lestrade fills them in on what is known: footprints from a man about five foot seven. Name Jennifer Wilson based on her credit cards. Found by some kids not long after she died. Scratched a word into the floor with her fingernails.

"Well, she's from out of town, clearly. Planned to spend a single night in London before returning home. So far, so obvious," Sherlock declares almost as soon as they are in the room.

"Obvious?" Lestrade questions. If they work together often, shouldn't the Detective Inspector sound less incredulous?

"She's German. 'Rache': it's German for 'revenge.' She could be trying to tell us something..." John turns to see Anderson leaning on the door-frame, one hand posed in pretentious thoughtfulness on his chin with his fingers touching his mouth. John's mind fills with a montage of every textbook, warning sign, lecture, and shouted chastisement from a superior he's ever encountered on how to properly utilize sterile gloves. John wouldn't touch his mouth with the same glove that had touched a dead body out of caution for his own health at the very least.

"Thank you so much for your input," Sherlock quips sarcastically, closing the door in Anderson's face, then turns back to John and Lestrade as if the weaselly man never existed. "Yes, obvious. Back of the right leg." Sherlock explains, not that that explains much. Sherlock takes a slow walk around the perimeter of the room, then starts poking at his phone. John looks carefully, but whatever Sherlock noticed wasn't obvious to him. He takes a critical look at the woman's legs, but can't make any conclusions from what he sees other than 'shapely' and 'very well groomed.'

"Doctor Watson, what do you think?" Sherlock asks just after John has concluded that he can't figure it out.

"What do I think?" John parrots, having nothing to say that wouldn't sound like he was borderline necrophilic or extremely petty over Anderson's reaction.

"You're the medical man."

"We have a whole team right outside," the Detective reminds them.

"They won't work with me," Sherlock retorts irritably, which is fair enough given what John's seen. John focuses back on the body, trying and failing to dredge up a bit of something useful. There was one conference on forensics and autopsy a decade back he'd attended with a very cute red-head, but he'd spent most of it studying the red-head. He is certain he hasn't encountered this much bright pink at once in his entire career.

"Doctor Watson," Sherlock's voice breaks through the haze and catches his focus again.

"Oh, do as he says. Help yourself," Lestrade bites off before stepping back and leaning out the door to tell the forensics team to wait their turn.

"Well?" Sherlock prompts.

"What am I doing here?" John says softly as he clumsily lowers himself to one knee, still holding tight to the cane so that it doesn't bump into anything and disturb evidence.

"Helping me make a point."

"I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent."

"Yes, well, this is more fun." Sherlock smiles down at him, which is a bit out of place at a murder scene.

"Fun? There's a woman lying dead," John says with a twitch of his right hand on his cane. He still hasn't gotten used to only having one free hand thanks to the stupid thing, and come to think of it he shouldn't transfer anything to or from the handle and will have to do his examination one-handed even after getting down on the floor. Sherlock's eyes dart to the movement before settling back on John's face. He sounds a little disappointed when he replies.

"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper." Lestrade steps back into the room and John finally brings his other knee down so he can at least pretend he knows what he's doing.

"More pink than I've ever seen on one person," John mumbles out his initial impression. He checks for the scent of alcohol and looks her over for symptoms as much as he is able, pulling out a pen and notepad out without thinking to make note of the visible symptoms out of habit, scratching near illegibly with his right hand on the notepad pressed to his thigh as he has a thousand times before. His specialty is living bodies, but he isn't completely ignorant of what to look for, generally. After a moment he straightens up and gives his assessment as a 'medical man' as Sherlock asked him to. "Yeah ... Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. It could have been a seizure; possibly drugs."

"It was poison," Sherlock corrected.

"How do you know?"

"Because they were all poisoned."

"By who?" John asks, a half-second before realizing that is the point of their investigation.

"By themselves," Sherlock says instead of the scathing criticism John was expecting.

"We've identified the drug..." Lestrade spoke up.

"Doesn't matter; it was poison," Sherlock dismisses with a wave of his hand. "Same pattern each time." Sherlock picks up the woman's hand and looks at it while he is talking. He sniffs at her face, palm, and nails, much as John had, but then gently shifts her clothing more than John had. "Each one of them disappears from their normal lives: from the theater, from the office, from the pub." John has to move out of the way as Sherlock comes around to the other side of the body, continuing to gently examine the body. He checks her pockets and prods at her coat here and there, even turning her collar up for a moment. "Then, turn up a few hours later somewhere they've no reason to be, dead." Sherlock's voice has slowly lost volume as he explained, ending up soft and sad before shaking himself and starting to speak at normal volume again. "No marks of violence on the body, no suggestion of compulsion. Each of them has taken the same poison – and, as far as we can tell, taken it voluntarily."

"Sherlock – two minutes, I said. I need anything you've got," the detective prompts.

"Victim is in her late thirties. Professional person, going by her clothes; I'm guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Traveled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. It's obvious from the size of her suitcase," Sherlock speaks quickly, the words firing out of his mouth like a machine gun blast as he jumps to his feet. John struggles his own way up off the floor.

"Suitcase?" Lestrade mutters. John looks around and can't find the mentioned item.

"Suitcase, yes. She's been married at least ten years, but not happily. She's had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married," Sherlock continued.

"Oh, for God's sake, if you're just making this up..." Lestrade sighs.

"Her wedding ring – look at it. It's too tight. She was thinner when she first wore it; that says married for a while. Also, there's grime in the gem setting. The rest of her jewelry's recently been cleaned; that tells you everything you need to know about the state of her marriage," Sherlock answers, stabbing an irritated finger toward the woman's left hand. John shakes his head with an admiring smile. The taller man drops back down to his knees and shows off the details. Amid how impressed he is, John almost misses that Sherlock is glancing at him while speaking instead of addressing the detective inspector. "Inside of the ring is shinier than the outside – that means it's regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger, but it can't be easy, so she must have a reason. Can't be for work; her nails are too long. Doesn't work with her hands, so what or rather who does she remove her ring for? Clearly not one lover; she'd never sustain the fiction of being single over time, so more likely a string of them. Simple."

"Brilliant," the word pops out of John, surprising Sherlock as much as himself. "Sorry."

"Cardiff?" Lestrade prompts, ending the awkward moment.

"Obvious, isn't it?"

"It's not obvious to me," John mutters.

"Dear God. What's it like inside your funny little brains? It must be so boring," Sherlock complains, then launches into another explanation while poking his phone. "Her coat: slightly damp. She's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London until the last few minutes. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She's turned it up against the wind. She's got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket but it's dry and unused: not just wind, strong wind – too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance but she can't have traveled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn't dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time? Cardiff." As he finishes speaking, Sherlock turns his phone to face Lestrade. John can't see it from here, but looking up the weather is such a simple thing that for a moment he can't see why they hadn't done so themselves.

"Fantastic," John chuckles to himself, looking over the ridiculous notes he'd made.

"Do you know you do that out loud?" Sherlock asked, which popped John's head up from looking at the notebook.

"Sorry. I'll shut up."

"No, it's... it's fine," Sherlock answers as he stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

"There was no suitcase," Lestrade said, slightly smug.

"I'm sorry?" Sherlock prompted, turning back to see the smug look on the detective's face.

"You keep saying 'suitcase'. There wasn't one," Lestrade explained.

"Oh. I was assuming you'd taken it away," Sherlock replied, looking around the room reflexively to confirm.

"She had a handbag. Why'd you say she had a case?" Lestrade asked.

"Because she did. Her handbag – was there a mobile phone in it?" Sherlock replied with a question of his own.

"No."

"That's odd. That's very odd," Sherlock muttered, starting to move a bit in a way that was more fidgeting than proper pacing. Lestrade was clearly still confused, but the bullet-speed of Sherlock's train of thought was a bit to catch up to.

"Why?" Lestrade asked.

"Never mind. We need to find her case and Rachael," Sherlock insisted.

"She was writing Rachael?" Lestrade asked, clearly confused.

"No, she was leaving an angry note in German! Of course she was writing Rachael, there is no other word it could be," Sherlock shouted back. "Why did she wait until she was dying to write it?"

"How do you know she had a case?" John interrupted with his own question, as that seemed to be a better question to get the two men on the same page than the things they were actually saying to each other. Sherlock pointed down at the back of the woman's right leg, letting loose another rapid-fire explanation.

"Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don't get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, judging by the spread. A case that size, woman this clothes conscious: could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying the night."

"Maybe she checked into a hotel, left her case there," John thought out loud, though that sounded off as soon as he said it because...

"She never made it to a hotel. Look at her hair! Color-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. A woman like that would never leave the hotel with her hair still looking that ..." Sherlock babbles out the same thing John's slower mind was just processing before suddenly stopping and going wide-eyed. "Oh. Oh!" Sherlock's face lights up and he scampers out of the room, tugging at the blue cover-alls as he goes. John instinctively follows, which is a developing habit he's going to have to assess later.

"Sherlock?" John calls down the stairs.

"What? What is it? What, what, what?" Lestrade excitedly talks over John, leaning over the banister next to him as Sherlock twirls his way down the stairway, stripping off his gloves.

"Serial killers – always hard. Have to wait for them to make a mistake." John follows his curly head from above as he spirals down the stairs.

"Well, we can't just wait!" Lestrade shouts.

"Oh, we're done waiting! When she was found, she couldn't have been here long, is that right?" Sherlock stops descending and leans into the center of the stairwell to look up at them.

"No, not long at all – um, less than an hour," the D.I. confirms.

"Less than an hour," Sherlock echoes, before suddenly launching into rambling motion again, "An hour! News blackout - can you do that? Don't say that you've found her; nothing for a day."

"Why?" Lestrade asks, still leaning on the banister at the top of the stair.

"Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake," Sherlock crows happily. The lanky man rushes off, freeing himself from the blue coveralls just as he reaches the ground floor and out of sight, absently calling to them over his shoulder: "Back in a moment!"

#

 **Adventuring and Dinner**

Lestrade shouts after Sherlock and then huffs at his forensics team. John distractedly steps aside as Anderson comes onto the landing from where he'd been loitering in a hallway nearby. The man is clearly irritated at having his work delayed and hurries his subordinates along with short snappy comments. John isn't paying much attention, his mind churning slowly through the details trying to figure out what he was missing.

"We're after a psychopath," Lestrade explains to the irritated man.

"So, we're bringing in another psychopath to help?" is Anderson's snappy reply.

"If that's what it takes," the detective tells his subordinate with a little shrug.

"Pink... Media..." John mutters to himself, looking back through his notes as the forensics team gets to work looking for trace evidence. The talent for shorthand he'd developed in medical school served him well, he'd hardly been thinking about it as he scribbled out the details with his off hand without sullying his sterile working hand. "Oh, Anderson, you need to change his left glove, if you haven't already."

"What?" Anderson said, whirling back toward the landing.

"You touched your face and mouth when you were going on about the note being in German. Contamination, and all that," John said absently, only half paying attention.

"That's rich coming from you," Anderson answered with a vague gesture that might or might not be pointing at John's gloved hand holding his ratty notebook or the cane propped next to the railing he was leaning on.

"I'm left-handed, never touched the body with my right hand, did I Detective Lestrade?"

"Well... no," Lestrade said slowly, as if just realizing that he hadn't needed to prompt John at all. "It was very professional. Anderson, change your gloves."

"I realized what I did and changed them while your pet freak was sniffing around, not that he noticed," Anderson huffed, though John saw him tugging at his glove as he turned away from them and hurried back to his team.

"Sorry, you're ...?" Lestrade asks John.

"Captain Watson," John supplies absently, some important thought about the dead woman struggling to come together. Glancing back at his notes, his eyes fixed on Lestrade's unanswered question about the missing phone.

"Well, you're gonna have to go, Captain Watson, I've bent the rules enough tonight. Though... Where are you assigned that you ran into Sherlock?"

"Nowhere, invalided," John said, tucking his notes away to give his cane a waggle. "Rightfully, since I feel like someone's soaked my brain in molasses."

"Sherlock can have that effect on people," Lestrade chuckled conspiratorially. "Never mind trying to keep up with him on a normal day, let alone while on the mend."

"So can severe blood loss. He didn't mention my fitness when he was running down my life's story earlier, so I have to wonder if he was just being polite..." John began.

"Sherlock Holmes and polite don't belong in the same sentence," Anderson chimed in from where he was blatantly eavesdropping while supervising his team just inside the doorway.

"...or if he just couldn't deduce possible brain damage without some more obvious clue."

"Right, let me get you sorted," Lestrade said. His demeanor shifted from mildly annoyed and distracted to the pinched sort of pity that John hated most. He'd hoped that the Detective would have been more professional than that. "I'll have a talk with him later about professional courtesy. It's never worked before, but repeating it..."

"Do you know her occupation?" John interrupted before he could get distracted again. "You had her name, Jennifer Wilson, but do you actually know if she is in the media or not?"

"I haven't heard back since we called in her ID," Lestrade said as he ushered John down the stairs. "It can take a couple hours even for a priority case, New Scotland Yard or not."

"It's just that if she is, and a coat bright enough to be seen from space isn't necessarily good evidence, but if she is, then she should have something to record things on her. I had one fellow, some assistant to an intern or what have you that wasn't even a proper reporter yet, who tried to interview me about my job after he'd nearly had his finger severed in an argument about a woman." John had more trouble with his leg going down the stairs since he was focused more on wrangling his train of thought than where his cane was landing. Someone in a rush to get upstairs bumped into him hard and pitched him into the wobbly banister. Lestrade gave the other officer the evil eye on John's behalf, and the woman trailing after offered an apologetic nod to the short man.

"I don't follow," Lestrade said when they started walking again.

"Well, he could have waited for me to staunch the blood flow before he started playing twenty questions, but getting the story was more important to him. It wasn't just the one idiot, either. I've never met anyone in the business who wasn't a little rabid when offered a story, even if they were just the daytime telly sort. It's all a bit of a reach without something solid, but that would be a good way to get a woman dressed as posh as that into a place like this, wouldn't it? The lure of a scoop. She didn't have a phone on her, which I can't exactly cast stones over. She might have dropped it along the way or maybe she's a bit old fashioned about her work," John supposed, pointing vaguely at the notepad he kept in his pocket at all times. "A notebook or tape recorder? Whatever she had, if she knew she was coming up here for something not quite above board she might have dropped it on the way. Bit of a breadcrumb."

"If she wanted to leave some message it would be better to keep it on her," Lestrade countered as he watched John strip off the cover-alls, though he sounded thoughtful. "Rachel is our breadcrumb."

"People do their best thinking _before_ they realize they are about to die," John said with conviction. "While they are still fighting it. After, it's all emotion and knee-jerk reaction. Sherlock thinks there is something missing that should be there and so do I, but for different reasons."

"Fair enough, and it might give us a better idea of how she ended up here if we can find it," Lestrade replies amiably. "It is odd for a professional woman like that not to have a phone. What precinct did you work for?"

"Pardon?"

"Before you were invalided, where were you...?"

"Afghanistan," John cuts the detective off when the misunderstanding registers, "Army, not police. Signed up when I was sixteen as a cadet. Don't really know what I'm doing with myself yet, now that that's gone."

"Oh." Lestrade goes quiet after that. Sergeant Donovan is still outside, now leaning against a patrol car chatting with the officer inside. John can see the fresh-faced man smiling at her gamely. Well, every division had a bicycle - ready and waiting to take a ride around the block. Once upon a time John resembled that remark, though he never let it distract him while on duty like this.

"He's gone," she calls over to the pair of them when the officer in the car jolts at the sight of the DI and redirects her attention.

"Who, Sherlock Holmes?" John asks.

"Yeah, he just took off. He does that," the woman says with a bit of malice.

"Is he coming back?" Lestrade asks.

"Didn't look like it."

"Right," John huffs and looks around. "Where am I?"

"Brixton," Lestrade supplies as he holds up the crime scene tape for John. "I'm guessing you came here with Sherlock from Baker Street?"

"Yeah, I was there when you came by to fetch him, looking to rent a room from Mrs. Hudson. Flat-share, actually, as the upstairs is just a bed and bog. Mike set us up, might have to phone him and ask what the blazes..." John says absently as he looks up at the sky tiredly, hoping to discern which way was north despite being recently accustomed to the brighter and differently positioned stars of a rural setting and distant latitude. No luck with the patchy cloud cover obscuring most of the sky. What he did see brought his thoughts to a halt. There, among the chimney pots on the roof across the street, was Sherlock Holmes. Tall frame lit by the full moon and the shine of a thousand city lights, he cuts an imposing figure as he stalks along one roof-line and then turns abruptly to dash to the other side of the building to look down along the other side.

"Myc set you up?" Lestrade echoes, and Donovan says something quietly in the detective's ear just beyond John's hearing. John ignores their mumbling and speaks over them.

"I thought you said Sherlock left."

"He did," Donovan huffs.

"Who's that, then?" John says and points. He turns back to the caustic woman. "You know, I get that you and Anderson think you don't need his help and don't like him, and maybe you have good reason for not liking him, but greeting a colleague by calling him a freak and shitting on the person standing next to him just because they are in the blast radius of your hate isn't terribly professional. Fair's fair and all, but you didn't notice just shy of two meters of personified flamboyance shimmying up the side of a building instead of leaving. Maybe stop flirting with your co-workers and pay attention to the perimeter you are meant to be keeping, yeah?" As John is speaking Sherlock darts out of view.

"What the hell is he doing up there?" Lestrade says at the same time Donovan bursts out indignantly.

"Who do you think you are?"

"Drop it, Sergeant, he has a point," Lestrade huffs at her.

"I'll just bother the man whose fault it is I'm stranded here," John begins to say as he pulls out the sleek smart phone he barely knows how to use, "though maybe that means I should be calling Mike." Remembering that Sherlock said he preferred to text John set about the laborious process of typing on the tiny screen using only the unreliable thumb on his formerly dominant hand, his right hand holding tight to his cane to give his leg as much of a rest as he could in case he was about to have a long walk. Best not to lose leverage in negotiating what he wanted needlessly, and he really did need to force himself to use his left hand more or the very real and not at all in his head nerve damage wouldn't heal properly.

"Good god, it hurts just looking at you using that," Donovan scoffed.

"Loss of fine motor skills due to complications from a botched bullet removal," John explained. The abrasive woman deserved a bit of her own attitude handed back to her. "Want to have a go at my cane, too?"

"Lay off the veteran, Donovan, you have a job to do," Lestrade prompts. John stands just on the other side of the crime scene tape and types as best he can on the slick screen. He felt fiercely jealous of the little keyboard he'd spotted on Sherlock's more utilitarian looking phone the entire time the other man was fiddling with it in the car. Why these i-Apple things were so popular and expensive when they were so badly designed was beyond his understanding. His laptop was just as bad. At least he'd used Microsoft computers some while in the Army. He'd bought the silver Mac when he was still spending money as if he expected to heal up and ship out soon and needed a computer of his own to keep up with email correspondence while in hospital. They sold him some cock and bull about Apples being simpler to learn, having the phone and computer match being important for some technical reason, and that it would make both easier to use if they matched. Fucking dishonest salespeople, he should have just gotten the Thinkpad. At least then he'd be able to call up some of his old Army buddies for help getting it set up instead of standing around waiting for a ridiculously twee 'Genius' for half a day while still in a wheelchair.

At length, and refusing to abbreviate things absurdly as he knew was common, John sent Sherlock a text reading: _As much as I'd like to do this, I can't. You're too high for me. But you were my ride?_

 _I'm perfectly sober. - SH_ Is the speedy reply, followed by, _Who suggested I was high? a_ nd, while John was still typing his reply, _Surely you are skilled enough as a doctor to know the difference between natural excitement and a chemically induced state._

 _High off th3 ground,_ John clarified. Well, that confirmed that the "William" business is a touchy issue. _Joke about my height. And cane, but mostly height,_ he added.

 _Yes, because I'm on a roof._ Sherlock's next text chimed just as John sent the second line. John could easily imagine the awkward posture and faint blush from Sherlock's earlier tidying spree returning.

 _Meet you somewhere when you've finished impersonating a gargoyle?_

 _Baker Street._ Sherlock's answer was a little slower to arrive this time.

 _No._ John sent the single word before elaborating. _Too far a walk for me even if I wouldn't get lost trying. Don't know Brixton, other than how long the ride was._

 _GPS on your phone not working? Get a cab. Tube station nearby, if you must. Not sure how long this will take. Shouldn't be long._ The rapid-fire sentences came individually after another lengthy pause. John had started typing after the second one.

 _Instead: I follow on the ground, if not long, and call 999 if you slip and go silent?_ He hadn't had his prescribed walk today. At least it wouldn't be the same boring route.

 _By all means, follow if you can._ John poked and grumbled at his phone until it surrendered a map to him.

 _I think they make these things intentionally hard to use. Have a map on the phone now. Still at crime scene, how far ahead are you?_ John limped off at a fair clip in the direction he last saw Sherlock.

John followed Sherlock's periodic directions, catching sight of the man frequently as he swanned over the rooftops like the chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins. The zig-zag circular path Sherlock had taken over the rooftops and through alleyways was hard for John to follow on the ground, and the man was moving swiftly whenever John caught sight of him, but the time Sherlock took between moving from one alley to another had let John keep pace so long as he didn't stop moving. The only problem was the misty rain that started coming down on the soldier's hair as the clouds rolled in. The breezy weather wasn't quite a proper storm, but the winter wet was still a great deal colder than John's tropics-adjusted body cared for. The exercise kept him warm, but only just enough not to duck in somewhere to warm up. Several chirps of his phone signaled that Sherlock had 'found it, I knew I would' and navigated John to the detective's exact location. The last in the series of excited and impatient messages was some sort of special link thing for the map that essentially let John walk his dot toward another dot that was Sherlock until the two collided head-on. The manic brunette was holding a small pink case when he poked his head out of an alley several blocks away from their starting location.

"A pink suitcase!" John exclaimed when he closed the distance enough that he didn't have to shout. A slight waver in his voice betrayed how close to chattering his teeth were.

"The height of fashion for the woman who matches everything she wears," Sherlock quipped. "The killer must have driven her to Lauriston Gardens, but forgot that her suitcase was in the car. Wouldn't have taken him long to realize, not more than five minutes. Then the killer - serial killer so male is most likely - has to dispose of this bright pink case somewhere, but couldn't be seen with it. Quite a notable sight, a man with something like this, and in that neighborhood? Twitching curtains all around. Little old ladies, I love little old ladies. Better than CCTV, but no one saw anything odd. Lestrade would have been all over it if they had. He had to find an alley big enough for a car so he could dump this as soon as possible."

"Brilliant, you called Lestrade?" John asked. Sherlock pushed the handle of the case at John's free hand.

"Without checking on the lead?" Sherlock asked, raising his arm to hail a taxi as soon as he was relieved of his burden. "I'm not his sniffer dog, John. I do far more than just locate and point out unnoticed evidence." The taller man directed the driver to Baker street and manhandled the pink case into the back with them. He looked John over as the taxi pulled into traffic, his face suddenly pinching with curiosity. "You are cold."

"It's January, and I'm used to lower latitudes. Not that Afghanistan is hot all the time. Peaks of 45C in the summer, of course, but it can be downright frigid at times with the Himalayas right next door. Add to that, I'd been in Africa and the South Pacific a good long while before that," John explained with a shrug. "It's been years since I've been back in London for winter. A nice thick jumper is usually enough, but then this misty rain. I'll be fine once I dry off."

"The fireplace should warm up the parlor quickly," Sherlock said.

* * *

A/N: NOT BRIT PICKED - Generally I believe that the simplified phonetic spellings of the American English I was taught in school are better, but I do appreciate that my cousins across the pond don't have to worry about their spell check not catching assess misspelled as asses because if they meant to insult, they'd call us arses instead. Yes, I spent a semester of college in Scotland poking my roots, but it was a hands-on art course and I didn't actually have to write much of anything. I also possess a rather imperfect brain with mild dyslexic tendencies. If there is anything grammatically wrong or some Americanism that slipped in that is particularly glaring to you, please do leave a comment. That's what the box is for.

I pick and choose scenes and details from The Study In Pink and the Un-aired Pilot at my own discretion in the first part. Also, I don't care for the John Watson Moffat created, particularly in Series 3 and 4. When I think about Watson across recent interpretations, I feel that Jude Law was given a better script to work from for all that I think Martin Freeman did amazing work with what he was given. He starts off great: both in A Study in Pink as it was aired and the Pilot, developing in the Blind Banker, and right through The Great Game; however, the longer the series goes the more off the rails the characterization of the main characters gets. It's that trap in modern media where the stakes must always be raised higher and higher as things go along clashing with previous character development until we end up watching a mash-up of Saw and The Ring starring Sherlock's secret sister. Also, he is often stuck acting a bit stupid so that we, the audience, can have a detailed explanation we need to catch up to things that happened off screen and that isn't handeled as well as it could be in my humble opinion.


	2. Sherlock's POV

**Short-circuiting the Machine**

Sherlock was unaccustomed to having this kind of difficulty. He had a case. It was a good case: a creative serial killer. He should have been able to easily focus on solving it to the point of blocking out all other demands on his time and attention. He'd been following it avidly, soaking up as much information as he could get out of his various contacts and irritating Lestrade long before the D.I. caved and brought him in to help. He wasn't even entirely sure what day it was, as he had been on an odd sleep cycle to begin with due to his other cases and might have lost one from the flips to nocturnal and back he'd done. Even with that complication, the little puzzles he'd been thrown to keep him too busy to bother Lestrade about the two oddly similar suicides had been quite disappointing, then even more so when there were three deaths. Now, there were four identical suicides, there was something new about the last one, and there a mistake to chase down. Nothing should be intruding on his focus.

If you got down to root causes, then really Sherlock's wandering focus was all his brother's fault. Mycroft had been quite irritating all month. If Sherlock wanted to be completely honest with himself, and he tried to be so that he could sort things properly in his Mind Palace unless he had a very good reason to misfile something, his elder brother was not inventing problems to solve. He was overreacting, rather severely in Sherlock's opinion, but there was a little bit to fuss about. Sherlock's previous accommodation had been horrible. The place was run down, infested with vermin and mold that occasionally contaminated his experiments, and built primarily out of paper maché given its structural integrity. It was the fourth flat Sherlock had rented in a year, and he'd been tossed out after the scent of sulfur from one of his experiments disturbed the other tenants. In a fit of anger at being called on the smell when the woman next door filled the hall with a perfume of ripe diapers and boiled cabbage on a far more frequent basis, he'd let loose with the evidence that half of them were breaking laws. He'd intended to use the blackmail on the landlord to keep his place of residence. Instead, the police came in to mop up the criminals after one of the relatively law-abiding neighbors called 999. The arrest ensured Sherlock had a week to vacate instead of being tossed out on his ear the same day in a careless flaunting of tenant protection laws. How anyone living there could have not noticed that the basement had a grow room full of cannabis he'd never understand.

All of Sherlock's flats had been similar: places with the cheapest rent he could find. He would not leave London, he barely made enough to feed himself with The Work, and his trust fund had remained heavily restricted despite having properly gotten out of rehab six years ago. The only drug paraphernalia he kept on hand was for use as barter with his contacts, and there was nothing he was inclined to use himself in that box. He was clean, but if he could not provide for himself according to Mycroft's standards, then he'd be forced to attend a Family Dinner. Whatever well-meaning interference in his life such an event would result in was to be avoided at all costs.

Having too much cash on hand was supposedly "dangerous for a recovering addict" according to the psychiatrists Mycroft was still paying despite Sherlock having attended exactly none of their appointments after his release. As if trading favors for drugs wasn't just as easily done. Sherlock didn't have a strong belief in god, a spouse, a pet, or any other appropriately sentimental purpose in his life to keep him clean - something that had the doctors certain he'd be back under their care soon enough. Even though Mycroft claimed to understand The Work and what it was to Sherlock he clearly agreed with the so-called experts that Sherlock did not have any real motivation to remain sober. To that end, it had been arraigned through dubiously legal contracts for Sherlock to purchase essentials without actually handling any money as much as possible. Instead, he used accounts at shops that had been set up for him to clothe and groom himself despite the fact that going to the posh little shops Mycroft and Mummy picked out for him to get extravagantly priced clothing at times when he was living in a rat-infested hole was grating. The underlying message that he should get a proper career, preferably working for Mycroft, so he could afford such a lifestyle on his own was clear and unwelcome. However, dressing well both felt nice and generally reassured the few paying clients he had that he was competent. There was no good reason beyond petulance to refuse to use the offered luxuries.

Mummy's insistence that Sherlock keep up appearances for someone of his social standing and Mycroft paying the bill to ensure that he could comply worked together to ensure that he received at least one full outfit of high quality each season if not more as well as a selection of personal grooming items. He'd thought of selling some of his clothes a few times, but his odd size wasn't much in demand even without the custom tailoring and Mycroft would probably find a way to make him pay back whatever value he placed on the used things. He'd collected quite a hoard of clothes over the years, unable in his technical poverty to rationalize throwing out something of such high value unless it was properly ruined and too cautious of his brother's surveillance to sell the excess. In any case, the fine clothes and soaps had been something he missed during the two years he'd been completely cut off, and he could admit a great deal of personal vanity factored into his willingness to spend his brother's money on high-end clothing and toiletries.

Sherlock's own trust money had to last his until retirement age and there would be no arguing the merits of short-term losses in pursuit of long-term gains. That he had not been caught using drugs in six years and was a fully functional twenty-seven-year-old man running his own business did not matter, Mycroft persisted in treating him like an incapable child. His trust fund was kept just beyond his direct reach, though he did have his own personal and business accounts. Rather than paying for things directly, to use the bit of his trust fund that wasn't locked down he had to use a credit card that had been set up for him with a "reasonable" spending limit. The full balance was automatically paid in full by the trust each month, so any of his allowance that he didn't use could not be rolled into the next month. It was incredibly restrictive, and despite very reasonably pointing out that the setup encouraged spending as much as possible instead of developing responsible habits on several occasions the ridiculous setup remained. The debit card that was directly attached to his trust was nearly useless. His maximum per-month cash limit via that card was disgustingly small, not even enough for the thriftiest grocery bill, so he took it all on the first of each month. Most of that cash went to his network of informants, but he was able to stash a small amount away in case of emergencies. Emergencies like paying a security deposit on a new flat seasonally.

The flat at Baker's street with its promise of a discounted rent was a tantalizing offer. The location would not scare away clients. The walls were made of solid, thick plaster covered in acceptable wallpaper and pleasant, non-sterile colors. The gas fireplace was deliciously cozy. The furnishings were lived-in and comfortable. The pipes were reliable. The roof did not leak. The landlady adored him. It was right in the heart of the city. It was above a serviceable sandwich shop for when he needed quick food. It was a rather private building on a street with busy neighbors who wouldn't pay him any mind. It was everything he needed in a real home. It was perfect. It would be his sanctuary. It was more than twice the rent he was accustomed to paying.

Mycroft had facilitated Sherlock moving in, letting him take the funds to cover the security deposit out of his usual monthly allowance as a Christmas gift, but he would have to get a flatmate. No amount of wheedling would loosen Mycroft's iron-fisted hold on Sherlock's finances, and the expected increase in clients wasn't likely to help him make the first few month's rent. That was something he'd have to build over time and his reserves were not enough to last more than eight weeks without an immediate influx of cash. Not when he'd just splurged on ready to eat frozen meals that he lost during his unexpected eviction and would never see a penny of his old flat's security deposit despite not leaving any permanent property damage behind this time. Theoretically, he had enough in his monthly allowance to cover it, but Mrs. Hudson didn't take plastic and Mycroft wouldn't let him have a draft set up for the full amount. Housing should not be more than one third his total income, according to his brother, and it was part of his agreement when he got out of rehab to follow certain guidelines. Even when he added his trust allowance as if it was income to stretch the numbers, something Mycroft had not done when he cited the figures, his annual budget was still short by a couple hundred pounds. That Mycroft would not give him even that tiny bit of leeway on the arbitrary rule was hateful. He could afford it if he had proper access to his own money, but unfortunately he did not.

He might be able to convince Mrs. Hudson to take half the rent as a check from his business account and agree not to cash it until he'd gotten a well-paying case or two, but he doubted it. She might adore him, but she was already giving him a discount on the rent and there was only so much she could bend without incurring her own financial difficulties. The flat had been vacant for a few months already thanks to her late husband's reputation, the moldy state of the C flat in the basement, and the fallout after the rather nasty removal of the previous tenants. She was unlikely to evict Sherlock immediately, but she would likely come to the same solution Mycroft threatened him with and procure a tenant for the second floor without his input. Since the second floor was not fully equipped, the majority of the upper floors belonging to Mrs. Turner's 223 ever since the building was cut up into smaller sections from a single estate well over a hundred years ago, whoever lived upstairs would have to share Sherlock's kitchen and bath. With no door between the kitchen and parlor, they would also frequent the space Sherlock expected to host his clients in. Finding his own flatmate, someone he could stand well enough to ignore their presence at minimum, was a far better option than having someone randomly answer Mrs. Hudson's advert or arrive on Mycroft's orders and payroll as a babysitter.

The situation was intolerable. No one liked being around him for long periods of time. He didn't like being around people much, either. He considered Miss Molly Hooper, a pathologist at Bart's morgue, but her apparent infatuation with him would add complications he was neither inclined nor prepared to deal with. Also, the cats were incompatible with Mrs. Hudson's allergies. Lestrade still hadn't left his wife because of their children despite how much of a wreck his marriage was. No one else on the force tolerated him. His various street contacts either didn't have sufficient funds or were unsavory enough that Mycroft would evict them on Mrs. Hudson's behalf. He was quite certain he'd need to find new accommodations yet again quite shortly. Either Mycroft would send someone who would drive him away or he'd drive whoever Mrs. Hudson found away and it would end in disaster.

Then he met an army doctor recently invalided home due to injury. His brain had not been behaving itself since, with incessant stray thoughts jumbling his carefully maintained thought process regularly despite a very clear and rational desire to have John Watson as a flatmate. Even now, instead of going over details of a very interesting set of serial killings, Sherlock found himself reviewing his short acquaintance instead.

Doctor John Watson was genuinely interested in Sherlock's deductions and was not put off or angered by Sherlock's behavior when first meeting him in the slightest, instead expressing a mix of interest and adorable _\- unacceptable descriptor, correction: polite -_ confusion _._ Upon receiving an explanation of how Sherlock arrived at the conclusions he had about the man's history, Doctor Watson found what Sherlock did impressive even though it was directed at himself and contained a few bits of dirty few people would tolerate having the obvious truths they displayed pointed out to them, and Sherlock could not pretend he didn't observe and understand all those little things about everyone he encountered for more than a handful of stressful hours. _\- Emotional responses outside acceptable bounds, end conversation method: fiddle with phone to look busy. -_ He was also genuinely interesting: an army doctor wounded in action? The army usually kept such valuable assets as far from the front lines as was feasible. There was something there, some unspoken story, and even if the soldier offered it to him before he'd assembled enough data to deduce it himself, there would be clues in the story leading to deeper layers of this man's life. He was a heap of contradictory evidence just waiting to be teased out into an intricate picture. A perfect flatmate delivered directly to him like a bespoke gift. Sherlock could not let this opportunity pass, John Watson would be moving in with him. _\- All available data on John Watson to be collected, create new room in Mind Palace main floor for: people/interesting/flatmate tagged for regular review. -_

Clearly, the blond had attracted and kept friends for years even with minimal attention paid to them. Mike Stamford had not seen John Watson in years yet treated him as if they were good friends, and there were a few comments on his one-line blog posts from people very willing to reach out and help the struggling man. Yet, he showed every indicator of deep loneliness. Clearly John Watson was depressed to the point of being nearly suicidal, though he was still fighting hard against the impulse, and that may account for part of the symptoms of loneliness on display. Physically he was short and fair, the first hints of prematurely gray hair shining very obviously in the unflattering florescent lights, blue eyes that shifted from dull to sharp in an instant given certain stimulus, clearly recovering from illness but solid and really rather handsome - _irrelevant; priority: need to acquire flatmate_ \- accommodating. Yes, John was quite accommodating of Sherlock's scientific apparatus taking up much of the kitchen. His initial displeasure at finding out that all the clutter in 221B belonged to Sherlock had faded quickly. As soon as Sherlock demonstrated a willingness to make room in the parlor for his potential flat mate's things the former soldier visibly relaxed and went upstairs to examine the second bedroom, returning looking satisfied. Perhaps he wanted to display some memorabilia collected from his travels or just a photograph or two of his army mates in uniform. That would be an interesting addition to the aesthetic: a candid shot of fit men in uniform sweating in the sun, or perhaps a proper portrait of his unit in dress uniform from some function. - _emotional response outside acceptable bounds, delete -_ Some photographs would reveal a plethora of data about the man's past useful for navigating their cohabitation for as long as he needed assistance with the rent.

John was even willing to help with The Work, putting in quite the effort not to be left behind despite a less than stellar showing at the crime scene even granting that it was possibly his first time seeing a dead body outside a hospital or battlefield setting. The praise that spilled so honestly and easily out of the man's mouth was incomprehensible. Sherlock hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it, except that when John suggested that he could stop Sherlock felt an urgent need to ensure the man did no such thing. John's psychosomatic limp ensured the shorter man could not properly assist Sherlock's search for the pink suitcase, but the regular texts exchanged between them so his tail wouldn't get lost were both occasionally amusing and rather helpful in ensuring he took the most efficient path in his search by forcing him to consider not only the swiftest path to each darkened alley he could chart, but also to continually recalculate the path someone on a street needed to take. That shuffled some of the likely hiding places down to possible and some of the possible ones to unlikely. It only took a little more than half an hour to locate the dead woman's suitcase, a feat which was noted by John with immediate praise. Praise that lit up parts of Sherlock's psyche that had been left dark and disused for years and that he had never managed to get to work 'normally' according to a hoard of therapists and rehab specialists. It almost made how distracting the man was worth it all by itself.

At the current moment, Sherlock should have been sitting back in the cab quietly and letting the facts of the case stew in his mind so he would be able to immediately sort through the contents and condition of the pink suitcase for further evidence when he reached his flat without missing anything. Instead, he was asking John about being cold despite it being incredibly obvious extraneous data he could do nothing about while his brain replayed the older man's casual and honest praise looking for the exact stimulus required to make John do it again as often as possible whenever convenient. His inability to process John's pleased reactions had the happy exclamations looping through his mind with nowhere to settle. He found himself carefully filing away the relatively useless trivia about the weather patterns in Afghanistan and trying to recall how long it takes a body to acclimatize to different environments. He noted that John had not had leave in Britain during winter in years, meaning he'd not been home for the holidays in some time. Sherlock recategorized the trouble between John and his family to a higher level of dysfunction, with the possibility of no living family beyond Harry. For all their problems, Sherlock and Mycroft still spend a few hours together with their parents at Christmas and their respective birthdays for tea or dinner. To distract himself, and possibly John, from any emotional implications he pointed out the physical comfort the fireplace in 221B would provide.

"I've been thinking about that fireplace longingly for the last few blocks," John said. He had a sheepish tilt to his head and fiddled with the handle of his cane. "Is it a gas conversion or electric?"

"Gas, thankfully, the electric ones are no better than decorative hotplates." Sherlock wasn't sure why he was still talking. "Wood-burning would be my personal preference, but that is obviously impossible to manage in Westminster."

"I wouldn't even know where to go to fetch a stack of firewood for an evening. Not exactly something you can pick up at the shops alongside the milk and bread, is it?" John replied with dry humor. "And, imagine trying to deal with that much wood on the Tube."

There was silence for five seconds as the two men locked eyes, each assessing the other's carefully blank expression, and then they dissolved into inappropriate giggles like a pair of teenagers. Sherlock was just getting himself under control when John made a couple gestures toward the retractable handle of the bright pink case set between them and squeaked out a few half syllables that Sherlock wasn't exactly certain how to fill in, but he was still able to glean the infantile humor suggested by holding on firmly to a pole on a moving train while holding one's own wood in the other hand and the possible arrest that would follow. They laughed even louder. Sherlock hadn't shared such easy laughter with someone else in years. It was wonderful.

"But the Pride parades aren't for months," Sherlock managed to say when they were winding down, hoping to tag on another crass joke to keep the bright smile on John's face and realizing a beat too late that his mind had flown well ahead of his mouth resulting in him voicing a punchline without the necessary setup.

"Good god," John said, breathless from laughter but sobering rapidly, "Harry's going to try and drag me out for that."

"You're still closeted? I was under the impression the military was all about equality these days." Flustered from the fumbled joke, Sherlock voiced his thoughts without filter. The look John shot him was sharp and shrewd, far more alert than he'd seemed even back at the crime scene. It faded quickly into John's usual agreeable expression.

"No, well..." John began to say.

"I didn't mean to..." Sherlock tried to backpedal.

"It isn't about being ashamed," John clarified. "I found that letting women know I was Bi made them stick me in the 'sassy gay friend' category and, well, when you've only got a three day pass it's practically impossible to get over that wall. Whenever word got around, I might as well have been a pot plant for all the attention I'd get, and not just from potential dates. Hard to strike up a working relationship when your co-workers are ghosting you."

"And a similar problem with men?" Sherlock asked slowly. He felt as if somewhere in his Mind Palace the rust was being knocked loose from some disused filing cabinet, the familiar feeling of a puzzle coming together now that all the pieces were available. He looked out the window awkwardly as he tried to figure out what it is that has been itching in the back of his mind for the last twenty-four hours. If he just had a little more time he could think it through, and he wished it would keep until the case was over, but he really needed to secure a flatmate as quickly as possible. John Watson was his best option. People generally took a couple weeks to sort out their old lease and get all the paperwork in order when attaining new premises, so even one more week of searching would likely put him past his deadline. More importantly, there was a good case on. He ought to be concentrating on that. Whatever it was that kept trying to derail his thoughts could surely wait, and in any case, it felt more like a positive than a negative. If it turned out that there was something that made the doctor impossible to live with, he could sort it out once the mystery had been solved and the first month's rent properly secured.

"I just picked a lane, I suppose," John said with a shrug. "Err, you have a girlfriend?"

"Not really my area," Sherlock said as calmly as he could.

"Boyfriend, then?" John asked.

"No."

"So, we're both unattached. That's fine." Sherlock frowned, running over their conversation again, and then straightening up in his seat as Mrs. Hudson's intrusive assumption that he and John would share a bedroom and John's subsequent behavior was added into the equation. Realization ripped through him as the implications behind John's words finally registered. Panicking, his mouth began to bleat out a repeat of what he said the last time the issue came up, though the situation was a far cry from the overly thankful and rather unstable client who very nearly disrobed herself. From a hesitant start, his words sped up until they were nearly overlapping in a panicked babble.

"You should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I'm flattered by your interest, I'm really not looking for _any_ kind of..."

"That's, that's fine," John thankfully interrupted the rush of words gently. "It's all fine. Whatever shakes your... boat." A crease deepened between the former soldier's eyes. "I've made it awkward."

"It's all just transport," Sherlock deflected. "The brain is what counts."

"I only asked because, well... Flat mates should know what they are going in for," John said, paraphrasing Sherlock's own words from their first meeting. He was lying, or maybe just withholding something relevant, but Sherlock was too flustered to deduce what it was.

#

 **A (Suit)case**

SofiaDragon / Watson /

The rest of the cab ride was quiet, but not the easy quiet that they had previously. At least not on Sherlock's end, as John looked quite relaxed and used his position closer to the curb to exit the vehicle before Sherlock could disengage his anxiously circling thoughts enough to move. After paying the driver - _John could not easily pay for a cab ride, his current lodgings were unlikely to be easily reached via tube from Brixton given that the Doctor had no clear idea where he was or how to get to the nearest tube station let alone one on the right line, obvious, should have realized that from the start_ \- and carried the pink case upstairs behind John's heavily limping frame. Once in his new flat, Sherlock tossed his long coat aside and got to work processing the little bundle of evidence. John hovered nearby, clearly ready to be useful.

He had already checked the outside for anything useful, running a bit of tape on the outside to catch fibers as soon as he could, but that would be a Hail Mary given the amount and type of rubbish the ratty tarp-covered skip contained and the wet mist that worked its way under the bedraggled makeshift cover. Fingerprints would be a lost cause on the textured surface of the suitcase as well. There were no useful marks or scuffs on the outside at all. Sherlock pulled out his cell phone to do a reverse look up of the identification on the suitcase tag and noted the results. The extra pair of hands that joined his when he started shifting the pile of cold case files sitting on the coffee table halved the amount of time he had to wait to get the suitcase open. Then, he carefully opened the case, removing the items within one at a time and setting them aside. When Sherlock finished, he sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers as he ran through various possibilities. The missing cell phone was a glaringly obvious clue, but it would not do to get too distracted by the obvious and not consider the smaller details.

When he emerged from his Mind Palace completely, John was sitting in the other armchair looking through a notebook with a cup of tea at his elbow. Another cup was on the side table closest to Sherlock's chair, the honey pot and a shot glass full of milk next to it. John must have lit the fireplace at some point while Sherlock worked through the suitcase, because the light and warmth flickering from it was comfortable after so long outdoors in gradually worsening weather. The mist was gone from his hair and while he wasn't completely dry his transport was no longer bothering him over the minor irritation of wet trouser legs. It was very efficient, having someone to do little things so he didn't have to stop what he was doing to handle nuisances like that. His usual consultants were only interested in a single task and then compensation. This flatmate idea might just turn out to be the most enjoyable experiment he'd conducted in a while.

"Tea?" Sherlock prompted.

"Mrs. Hudson left the kettle full and the cups and saucers out. You were too deep in thought to notice an air-raid siren, but I figured you kept the honey pot in the box of teabags for a reason," John answered with a shrug. "Couldn't find the rest of the service, but the shot glass is the right size for one cup of tea."

"And also, not wasteful in the instance that I don't take milk," Sherlock said as he dumped the milk into his cup and pried the sticky lid off the honey pot. "The tea service is still packed, one of the boxes under the kitchen table I believe. Can't be certain, I never unpacked it at my last flat."

"Ah, some decorative thing that's a pain in the arse to clean?" John guessed. Not a bad guess, considering, but not accurate in the slightest. "I've got a fairly utilitarian white set." Then, after a pause. "I say set, but I just mean I have enough to make a set. Picked them up here and there as I needed to, whatever was cheap since they were likely to break as I moved around."

"Which is also why they are white, you can get new all-white or mostly white items to replace the broken ones from just about any manufacturer easily and they will match well enough," Sherlock deduced, then remembered his earlier misstep of not having obvious space set aside for John's things. "We will have to sort out what things we are and are not willing to consider part of communal space, though generally speaking anything functional in the kitchen or parlor would be shared with allowances for decorative items of personal value." John was on the verge of laughing at him, so Sherlock shut up.

"I've spent the majority of my life in communal living arrangements of one sort or another," the former soldier reminded Sherlock. _Stupid, obvious, John didn't need to be told such things._ Why was he even talking about this? There was a case on! Focus!

"Do you see what is missing?" Sherlock asked, pointing at the suitcase.

"Her mobile," John answered immediately. Sherlock twitched to look at John, surprised. The soldier tapped his notebook against his knee. "I've had a few minutes to review things."

"Yes, of course, I mentioned it before. No phone in her handbag or suitcase, but a number on the luggage tag. What use is putting a land line on a luggage tag? None. So, she was traveling with a phone and no longer has it," Sherlock said.

"She could have dropped it somewhere along her way into the building. I was saying to Lestrade, after you left, that if she works in media she'd have something to take down notes or record things. Well, unless she was going on a serious holiday and cutting herself off from all that I suppose, but there isn't enough in the suitcase for more than one night. Like you said while you unpacked it: One office outfit and one dress for going out," John thought aloud. Sherlock didn't remember speaking while he unpacked the suitcase, but he did have a tendency to mumble. "She could have come to London for a night unplugged from work, but..."

"Highly unlikely destination for such a short trip of that nature, and why bring a power suit? No, she dropped the phone somewhere. She's clever, too, wouldn't have dropped it accidentally. That phone was her life and livelihood."

"How do you figure that?"

"As you said, she has to have something to do her work on. No laptop, no sign of one having ever been in the suitcase or any other device electronic or archaic on which she does it other than a phone number on the luggage tag. She had a string of lovers, she has to have a mobile phone and would never leave it at home. Clever, because she would have to be to juggle all those men. The phone was both her work and her entertainment, she would never willingly part with it," Sherlock concluded. "So where is it?"

"They can trace phone calls, can't they? I mean if we give the number to the police, they could find the phone and we'd have another potential crime scene with more evidence to work with," John asked. Sherlock got momentarily hung up on the repeated use of the first-person plural in John's speech. When Lestrade used it, he meant the police force, usually his specific team, and did not intend to include Sherlock within those covered by the pronoun - most people meant it in that manner. 'We' always indicated a group that did not include Sherlock, sometimes with emphasis to ensure he understood the exclusion. Then, he fully processed the nonsense that John was suggesting.

"If they are on, if someone answers the call, if they have the latest software on the phone itself, if there are at least three cellular towers in range of the phone that are also properly modern, then yes, they could. It is a far less reliable option than you might assume to track a cell phone by tracing a call, particularly if the phone is not answered. Those crime dramas in print or film are riddled with future tech and inaccuracies," Sherlock said with a dismissive huff, taking a few swallows of the now tepid tea. John said 'we,' lit fireplaces, made tea, and shared laughter with him. "You have your phone?"

"The battery is a bit knackered," John admitted as he pulled it out. He tapped it to check how badly it was drained from chasing Sherlock using his map. "About five percent left, I think. Fou-oh, three now, sorry."

"You'll have to charge it," Sherlock sighed, deeply disappointed. He didn't have a cable for that brand of phone, and it would be useless to implement his plan without a reliable and unknown cell phone. "My number is listed on my website, there is always the chance it will be recognized."

"You wanted me to call someone?" John asked.

"Send a text, actually, but that would obviously be useless if it died before you could receive any form of answer."

"I guess I'm done for the night then," John said, an acceptable amount of disappointment in his voice. It was quite pleasing to hear for reasons Sherlock was decidedly not thinking about.

"Fetch the cable," Sherlock suggested. Well, he said it with the same matter-of-fact tone he used most of the time when he was pointing out obvious things, which many people found to be demanding. John hadn't seemed to mind it so far, and two-thirds of people object to it on the first exposure, so that was a good sign for how well John understood Sherlock's meaning.

"It'll be a good few hours before I have a full charge, not to mention the travel time back and forth," John said, craning his neck to see the clock in the kitchen. "It'll be midnight, at least."

"Fine," Sherlock said, launching himself out of his chair and taking his scarf off the back of the door of his new flat as he spoke, "we'll go together, use your phone to test a theory while it is plugged in, then you can bring the cable with you when we continue on. There will be a plug so that if you have further need of it as the evening progresses you will be able to use it." By the time Sherlock wrapped himself in his heavy wool coat and turned around, John had taken his own coat off the back of his chair and was ready to go. The smaller man wasn't putting an ounce of weight on the cane he held as they left the flat, which was something Sherlock would have to keep an eye on. He had a few theories about what sort of thing might cure John's limp and it would be extremely convenient if the doctor would be regularly useful and not just a live-in consultant.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I changed the voice for Sherlock's inner monologue/mind palace speech completely halfway through this. Yes, he references computers when explaining how he processes information and called his brain his hard drive while the ACD version had an 'attic,' but it felt gimmicky and stupid and awkward to keep track of so I dropped it when I hit present tense. This will be getting some serious edits before it hits AO3 to fix that inconsistency. All of this is just lead-up to the original mystery I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2018, which is in need of editing and a wrap-up chapter, but we've blasted past the bits that are unchanged from the aired episode and are firmly in AU territory now.


	3. A Doctor in a Box

**A Doctor in a Box**

John's current accommodations were... clean. That was the only positive adjective Sherlock could muster, and he wasn't entirely certain it was all that positive. They were still within Greater London, though it was a near thing. Further afield than Sherlock had deduced; John must have been spending most of his time in more familiar areas much closer to the city center. It was in an inconvenient location, and not even terribly close to a tube station. As with most older buildings, this one had been carved up in whatever way the architects believed was the most cost-effective manner when it lost its original purpose. Given the residual signs, John's flat was likely built as a professional space of some sort, part of a set of workspaces for craftsmen supplying a long-closed storefront on the ground floor. A twin bed was to the right against one wall as they walked in, a kitchenette to the left, a desk and dining table that shared two matching chairs, and the world's smallest couch filled the little room with two doors for a closet and a bathroom through the kitchen area. Sherlock had stayed in more spacious hostels, the only difference being the lack of a top bunk for the bed. Upon second glance, it resembled the room in the posh facility where Mycroft tried to have him fixed entirely too much.

"I know I've said this in the cab, but is this really the most efficient way to do this? Shouldn't we just call the police and get it done that way?" John asked. The repetition was tedious, but the comment was accompanied by swift action. Sherlock had barely crossed the threshold and John's now properly dead phone was plugged into the waiting charger by the desk.

 _John takes meticulous care of his other possessions and leaves the charger plugged into a live socket despite the fire hazard it poses. He was not too busy to unplug it and his grasp of electronics is not good enough to understand the details of the minimal risk, so it must actually be poor to the point he is unaware of the risk,_ Sherlock thought to himself. _Alternate possibilities: a latent tendency toward sloth or a hint of recklessness. Unwashed teacup and plates in the sink from a modest lunch despite our meeting at seven being his only engagement for the day, possible corroboration of minor lazy habits. Unforgivably tiny bed even for a man of John's stature is made to military standard, as expected. None of this furniture is his, all rented from the landlord. No meat on the grocery list: is money that tight or is the good doctor a vegetarian? Why is a surgeon living in such cheap accommodation and still in need of a flatmate? Bad blood between him and his sister, but she has money even with the drinking, is doing well enough to own a luxury device and then give it away instead of selling it when it is no longer wanted. Inscription reduced resale value, but a phone case or skin would hide it completely and the iPhone is in high demand. Could have easily fetched..._

"Sherlock!" John shouted, pulling him out of his deductions.

"I was thinking," Sherlock said, reflexively. He'd spent most of the cab ride thinking, though that had been productive as it was focused on the case and not a deluge of rubbish he didn't need cluttering up his mind. He needed a fag.

"Well, don't hover in the doorway," John said, gesturing irritably with his cane. Hateful thing, something really needed to be done about the cane and if John's phone was charged they could get on with it. Sherlock properly stepped into the room and closed the door, closing his eyes and leaning on the wall to block out all the extraneous information flooding his brain.

"We will only need to wait fifteen minutes or so to send the text to ensure that it remains charged long enough to get to a proper stakeout location. I told you, we can set the time frame if we have to, though the exact wording needs to be perfect," Sherlock reworded what he'd said in the cab, which was tedious. Why was John being tedious all of the sudden? He pulled off his gloves to search out some nicotine patches from his pockets. Only two, which was suddenly a problem. Even just opening his eyes to get his coat and jacket off filled his head with garbage deductions from the state of the carpet. He managed the sit on the square little loveseat, though he could feel John's eyes on him as he fumbled off the wrapper of the first patch. Perhaps this was where it would go wrong? It always went wrong somehow, but he'd hoped he could at least get one whole case finished before John realized how unlikable Sherlock was and started teasing him.

"What's that?" John said, suddenly much closer than Sherlock expected him to be.

"Nicotine patch, it's impossible to maintain a smoking habit in London these days. Bad news for brain work."

"Good news for breathing."

"Breathing's boring," Sherlock said dismissively, sticking the first patch onto his forearm and wishing the drug into his body faster. John's hand settled on Sherlock's shoulder. The thin material of his green dress shirt and vest did nothing to inhibit the warmth of John's fingers, giving Sherlock's mind something tactile to focus on. It immediately stopped him from overloading. Untrusting of that sudden relief, Sherlock started unwrapping the second patch to correct the issue chemically. Habit ensured he hadn't rolled the sleeve up too far and exposed anything incriminating.

"Two of them?" John asked, a doctor's concern with the edge of doubt. Did he think they were laced with something? Had Mycroft stuck his nose in already and warned John about the drugs? No, there would have been signs, and John might even have just told him directly if he'd had a clandestine meeting with the personification of the British Government.

"It is a two-patch problem," Sherlock replied, though he wasn't just talking about the case. He'd have used a third if he had it, and now he didn't have any emergency stash left in his coat. He took several slow breaths, holding the patches on his skin to speed the delivery, sighing in relief when he started to feel the change in his personal chemistry. John was thinking. Sherlock could see him without turning toward him using the reflection on the window and every line of the man's body screamed with the effort of processing what he'd just witnessed, but he said nothing. Vague approval dawned in the man's eyes and John gave a silent nod before stepping away.

 _He thinks it was nicotine withdrawal,_ Sherlock realized. _He clearly thinks that I have only recently started using patches - accurate, though not based on deductively sound observations. Likely assumes I either forgot to use a patch or resisted the urge until I was feeling poorly enough to swoon. Did I swoon? No, it wasn't that obvious. Closed eyes, rigid posture, moving to the chair without looking: most obvious assumption is some sort of light sensitivity. Most likely mistaken for a headache, not necessarily sudden onset since I was also quiet and withdrawn in the cab. That bit of approval at the end: Good on you, Sherlock, for quitting a bad habit. No grand speech or hackneyed encouragement, just 'good news for breathing' and an approving look. Do I like that? It feels... something. Polite, unobtrusive. Good. Yes, I do. Much preferable to the other reactions: Mummy's grand voice mail after Mycroft informed her. Mycroft's blatant - accurate - accusation that I am only maintaining my use of nicotine as the anti-smoking laws tighten. Hypocrite, he's doing the same thing._

"I'm just getting a drink while we wait," John's voice pierced through Sherlock's thoughts again. "Not much in at the moment, but I've got filtered water, orange juice, milk." Sherlock looked over at the doctor. He stood in front of the counter with one glass in front of him and the cupboard open ready to take out a second. Dr. Watson must be big on hydration, a good habit to develop in the hotter climates he spent the majority of his career in. Probably best to appease him.

"Water is fine, just a small glass. We had tea not long ago," Sherlock answered. He wouldn't normally give the explanation, but if he was going to live with John, he would need to set a strong precedent or waste untold amounts of time fending off the doctor's reflexive care-taking.

"And nearly an hour of vigorous exercise." It was a good counter-argument; Sherlock wouldn't waste the brain power on it this time. John brought Sherlock the first glass of water, spilling a little and frowning angrily at his left hand. He was limping more than Sherlock had ever seen as he returned to sip from his own water. This horrible little flat was hard on them both.

"Just a few more minutes, then we can begin. We'll need to be ready to get into position," Sherlock said to refocus their attention on the case, keeping his eyes on the point of light on the tabletop created by the light bending as it passed through his water. He lessened pressure on his arm and took a breath as the initial rush of nicotine in his system started to stabilize. "I am almost certain this will work. There is the slight chance that the phone was also dumped, but then it would have been in the same skip as the suitcase. Perhaps he's taken a trophy. Escalating behavior, possible after getting away with it repeatedly. Greater possibility he didn't see it in his car even after he remembered the suitcase."

"You said there would be a plug there. We could just go," John suggested. Sherlock looked up from the cup in time to see the Doctor shrug. "I'm assuming any stakeout location with electric is also heated, and we won't risk missing something if we get caught in traffic that way."

"I need to think, John," Sherlock insisted. "I need to craft a stimulus I can be certain the killer will respond to predictably that would not cause an innocent man to act in similar fashion. I've been constructing a profile of the killer, but there is now a mistake and new behavior to consider. I'm nearly certain, but there are a few additional possibilities I need to visualize before I can move forward." John nodded in response. After a moment he turned back to the kitchen.

While John kept his hands busy, Sherlock relaxed into the inadequate loveseat with his hands pressed together and turned his focus inward to play out a few different scenarios. A sudden chase through London's streets, the urgency and danger of catching a killer reminding John enough of his days as a soldier to command all of his attention, might get rid of his limp. Those happened often enough in Sherlock's line of work, and setting up a stakeout by laying bait for this killer was likely to result in optimal conditions for that occurrence. The only method of contacting the killer was the victim's cell phone, which made John essential. Well, he could have bothered Mrs. Hudson, but that might have brought her into the line of fire and she was unlikely to allow him to use her mobile for this purpose knowingly. John was a willing participant in the evening's events. 'Oh, God yes' was clear and enthusiastic consent.

 _No, no, that is not where that train of thought ought to be going and it needs to stop immediately,_ Sherlock grunted in frustration as he once again had to combat ancillary thoughts. The solution to the distraction was obvious, but he had no time to sort through that particular backlog of observations to acknowledged and discard them. He had a case on and he needed to focus. This endless derailment of his mental process needed to stop. He tried again and failed to cleanly envision the stakeout. The mental picture of spotting the killer outside Angelo's needlessly included a smiling blue-eyed blond, a bottle of wine, and romantic music. _Yes, alright, fine, he's a well-educated soldier and doctor. He thinks my deductions are brilliant and extraordinary instead of invasive and freakish. He is capable of showing concern without being stifling and offering support without needless criticism. He is nice to look at: while ill he collected a bit of extra padding from the inactivity of his convalescence but he has neither neglected his physical therapy nor picked up sedentary habits and therefore maintains much of his soldier's physique beneath the softer exterior. It's attractive both blatantly and metaphorically. So is his face, particularly the cute nose and expressive eyes. The collective scent in this room is pleasantly masculine and I won't mind it being in my flat, absent the stuffy contamination from the dismal surroundings. He is also highly sexual given how he chose to characterize the explanation of his closeted bisexuality and will clearly not be content in a relationship with someone on my end of the gray-sexual spectrum. I'm so thankful for my endocrine system proving that it still functions properly by insisting on endlessly bringing up the topic. Now shut up about it and focus on The Work or he'll get bored and go away._

"Right then," Sherlock said decisively, then started running through the logic aloud in order to properly refocus his mind on the things that mattered. "You have a point about getting into position before we trigger the killer. There were a few options I had for a stakeout location, but I've narrowed down the parameters considerably. We have no way to know how much she told the killer prior to her death. Best to go closer to the city center, as it won't be credible if we try to lure him out this far. It must seem to come from the victim, you understand, so it can't be far from where she would have been staying. Angelo is quite happy to let me use his place of business for such things on occasion, providing an ideal location."

"You have that set up in advance?" John said. He limped over to open one of the upper cabinets slightly out of Sherlock's view. All he could see from his seat was a sliver of him as he stretched up high for something. The gray jumper the doctor wore rode up to expose the pinstripe button down underneath, but Sherlock took firm hold of that observation and chucked it into the growing pile of things he would deal with later before it could grow into further speculation.

"I have developed a network of contacts and resources. Otherwise, I'd spend all my time waiting on idiots to follow up on leads for me and die of paperwork-induced tedium filling out all the requisition forms." A bark of laughter sounded as John pulled down a canvas weekender bag with tasteful leather accents. A man's bag, it was small and sturdy in neutral brown. It was more of a metro style than Sherlock would have expected, but not from a pricey brand. Clearly selected for practicality, there was a very nice zippered compartment on one side for organizing bits and bobs which Sherlock got to see put to use as John packed with military efficiency. Until that moment Sherlock was under the impression he was capable of rather speedy packing himself, but John had sorted his bag in half the time it would have taken Sherlock to pack his own leather case. In fact, it was done so swiftly that Sherlock wasn't finished being stunned at the implication that John would be staying at Baker street with him tonight. Sherlock got his jacket and coat back on and then they were off again, another forty-five-minute ride ahead of them.


	4. Dinner at Angelo's

**Dinner at Angelo's**

The hour and a half round trip was acceptably inefficient given the alternative scenarios. Had Sherlock lost John back in Brixton and needed to summon him from his gloomy little flat it likely would have taken even longer. Sherlock wouldn't have contacted him until after he'd fully formed the plan, would have then needed to devise a way to convince John to come back and implement that plan, and finally wait for the limping man to come to him. True, having John in the room was slightly more distracting, but talking to him seemed to clarify things very easily so that was a wash. John also seemed to move much faster when Sherlock was leading him compared to his pained waddling around he'd managed at other times. The white noise of the cab rides was very good for brain work and John had generally left him to it.

When they were halfway to Angelo's Sherlock prompted John to send the text that would lead the killer to them. He looked over John's shoulder while he murmured the instructions, glad that John leaned in so that he could clearly see the text appearing on the screen. John typed out: 'What happened at Lauriston Gdns? I must have blacked out. 22 Northumberland Terr. Please come.' And then all there was left to do was wait. The silence was tense until the phone rang, proving Sherlock correct. The killer had the phone and was panicking. John gave Sherlock's manic grin an odd look as he let it ring out. Sherlock immediately urged him out of the taxi, the process of paying the driver using his card annoyingly slow now that he was so close to the killer. He needed to move - walking the last block to Angelo's would burn off some of the adrenaline.

"You see, John, it is only a few hours since his last victim. Now, he has received a text that can only be from his victim. An innocent man would ignore that text, assume it was an inebriated mistake," Sherlock explained.

"You think he's stupid enough to come looking for her?" John asked.

"I think he's brilliant enough. I love the brilliant ones, always so desperate to get caught," Sherlock explained, gesturing excitedly.

"Why?"

"Appreciation. At long last the spotlight. To you it's an arrest; to them, it's a coming-out party. That's the frailty of genius: it needs an audience."

"Yes," John agreed immediately, "I suppose it does." Sherlock steers the shorter man into Angelo's and goes directly for his preferred table. He drops into a chair facing away from the large plate glass window and urges John into the seat across from him.

"Twenty-two Northumberland Terrace, keep your eyes on it," he instructs with a wave at the window behind him.

"Don't you want to keep your eyes on it?" John asked. Sherlock pointed at a large and quite obvious mirror hung on a pillar not far behind John and answered irritably.

"I am."

"He isn't just gonna ring the doorbell, though, is he? He'd need to be mad," John asked.

"He has killed four people. Still, he'll pass by a couple of times looking for the loose end, might even loiter."

"Half of London is passing by. How will you know who he is?"

"I know _what_ he is," Sherlock said with deep satisfaction.

"Sherlock!" the loud, boisterous voice of the restaurant's owner interrupts the conversation. Angelo continues in a lower, more conspiratorial tone. "Anything on the menu, whatever you want, free. All on the house, for you and your date."

"Do you want to eat?" Sherlock asks, ignoring the implications easily now that he has finally gotten his mind focused on the case.

"I'm not his date." The defensive tone of the words echoes in parts of Sherlock's memory that have no place in the present moment. He takes a moment as Angelo rambles on to squash the feelings of offense and disappointment before they can properly begin. They had already been through this once this evening. John has been in the closet most of his adult life; Sherlock established that his work is his focus. It is a clear fact that this is not a date and John's tone is likely simple reflex.

"This is Angelo. Three years ago I successfully proved to Inspector Lestrade that at the time of a particularly vicious triple murder, Angelo was in a completely different part of town, carjacking," Sherlock introduced the excitable Italian as the man shook him in a one-armed hug.

"He cleared my name," Angelo insists.

"I cleared it a bit," Sherlock clarified.

"Anything on the menu, I cook it for you myself," Angelo said, setting down two menus with a flourish.

"Thank you, Angelo." Sherlock's dismissal goes completely unnoticed as Angelo is speaking only to John.

"But for this man, I'd have gone to prison."

"You _did_ go to prison," Sherlock clarifies again, trying to cut off the unnecessary conversation. John appears mildly amused by the entire exchange, quirking up only one corner of his mouth so Angelo won't think John is laughing at his expense.

"I'll get a candle for the table. It's more romantic," Angelo says to John after a bit more fussing. Sherlock is fairly certain it is said with a wink.

"I'm not his date!" John answers indignantly to Angelo's back.

"You may as well eat. We might be waiting a long time," Sherlock says, voice flat.

"Hmm. Are you going to?" John asks, pursuing the menu instead of watching the street.

"What day is it?" Sherlock asks distractedly, his mind focused on scanning and categorizing the people walking past on the street. _Teacher, Office worker, Secretary, Student, Yoga instructor..._

"It's Saturday."

"I'm okay for a bit."

"Wait. You haven't eaten today? For God's sake, you need to eat," John sounds worried. He is a doctor, he would have that reaction to anyone saying such a thing.

"No, you need to eat. I need to think. The brain's what counts. Everything else is transport," Sherlock dismisses, taking his attention away from the street long enough to make proper eye contact and get his point across. A crease appears between John's eyebrows and his mouth turns down into a disapproving frown. Angelo comes back just then with a taper candle stuck in the neck of a bottle and sets it on the table.

"You might consider refueling," John is saying before the candle catches his eye and completely distracts him from whatever he was going to follow up with. He sighs and takes another moment to pick out a meal before setting the menu aside and getting back to the task at hand. His food arrives, Sherlock peripherally notices it is meatless just like the shopping list. He also notes that the doctor is capable of decent multi-tasking since he seems to be able to consume his meal without being distracted from watching the street outside the window. The breadsticks are eventually pushed close to Sherlock's elbow and at some point, his unused bread plate acquired a fork. Wasn't sharing tastes of another person's meal considered an intimate act despite its practicality given the large portion sizes and varied menu in many establishments?

"No sign yet, then?" John asks when he is about halfway through his aubergine pasta.

"I suppose it is a long shot. We have to be realistic," Sherlock admits, realizing that he'd started drumming his fingers on the table. His visible impatience likely prompted the renewed conversation so he straightens up in his chair.

"You said before you didn't know who the killer was but you knew what," John prompts.

"So do you if you think about it," Sherlock answers, shaking his head slightly and squinting irritably. "Why don't people just think?"

"Oh, because we're stupid," John answers. His expression is sufficiently deadpan that Sherlock can't tell if he has genuinely taken offense or is just teasing. Sherlock bites his lip as John casually takes another bite of his meal. Perhaps he should have taken advantage of the implied invitation to share the food. The longer they wait the less likely it is that the killer has taken the bait, and while the chance of catching the killer dwindles so too does Sherlock's ability to block out the irritating demands of his transport. A few nibbles would not slow him down, though sometimes a small snack only serves to give his body the energy to demand a full meal.

"We know the killer drove his victims, but there were no marks of coercion or violence on the bodies. Each one of those five people climbed into a stranger's car voluntarily. The killer was someone they trusted," Sherlock explained, gesturing deliberately with his hands as he spoke to keep them from fidgeting.

"But not someone they knew?" John asks, and it does look like he is trying to work it out despite the continued failure.

"Five completely different people. They had no friends in common, and another thing I mentioned earlier: Lauriston Gardens. Twitching curtains all around. Little old ladies, they are my favorite. Better than any security cameras, but according to the police, no one remembers a strange car parked outside an empty house. Not one person remembered even though someone must have seen." Sherlock leaned forward, watching the crease between John's eyes deepen in thought.

"I see what you're saying," John starts, slowly. Sherlock fidgets in his seat expectantly, waiting for John's guess. He doesn't seem at all sure and looks down to poke at his pasta before looking up and admitting, "No I don't. What are you saying: that the killer's got an invisible car?"

"Yes. Yes! Exactly!" Sherlock says excitedly. How could John understand so perfectly and still be so confused?

"Then I definitely don't see what you're saying." Sherlock huffs out a sigh at the unfairness of John's imperfect understanding but refuses defeat. He fixes John with a steady gaze.

"There are cars that pass like ghosts, unseen, unremembered. There are people we trust, always, when we're alone, when we're lost, when we're drunk. We never see their faces, but every day we disappear into their cars and let the trap close around us." Sherlock's gaze wanders back to the mirror as he talks, and he sees a cab pull up and pause a moment in front of the building across the street.

"Angelo, a glass of white wine, quickly," he calls out as he watches the cab carefully in the mirror, sparing a quick glance at John to ensure the other man is paying proper attention to the correct details. "I give you the perfect murder weapon of the modern age, the invisible car: The London Cab." The cab pulls away into a narrow side street and stops just a few yards down the road.

"There's been cabs up and down this street all night," John points out.

"This one's stopped," Sherlock says, nodding toward the mirror.

"He's looking for a fare." A woman walks towards the cab and leans down to the left-hand front window to talk to the driver as Angelo walks towards their table carrying the requested glass of wine. Out in the street, the woman straightens up again and walks away and the cab's light turns off. Sherlock grins.

"We don't know it's him," John points out.

"We don't know it isn't," Sherlock responds, and that is the more important point. Angelo puts the glass down in front of Sherlock, about to suggest a meal to go with it. "Thank you," Sherlock says before the chef can start. He picks up the glass, closing his eyes and throwing the wine into his own face. A few dabs with the napkin to ensure he isn't visibly dripping or in danger of getting any of the alcohol in his eyes and he looks over at John's befuddled face. "Watch. Don't interfere." Then, to Angelo, he says: "Headless nun."

"Ah, now that was a case!" Angelo says wistfully and begins to roll up his shirtsleeves. Sherlock puts his coat on. "Same again?"

"If you wouldn't mind." Instantly Angelo leans forward, seizes Sherlock by the scruff with one hand and a fistful of his coat in the other and drags him out of his chair.

"Out of my restaurant! Cretino! You're drunk!" Sherlock stumbles clumsily across the floor as Angelo bundles him toward the door, continuing to insult him in Italian and making a splendid scene until he shoves Sherlock out into the street. "And stay away!"

Sherlock staggers around on the pavement as if he is drunk and trying to get his balance. He totters to the curb and almost falls down it before stumbling out into the road, causing a car to slam on its brakes to avoid hitting him. The driver blares his horn as Sherlock holds out his hands apologetically. Holding his fist to his mouth as if trying not to vomit, Sherlock continues his drunken walk down the street. Reaching the driver's window, he raps on the glass with both hands as if drumming a beat. The driver inside, a much older man estranged from his wife wearing well-worn clothing, shakes his head.

"Hey, hey! Come on!" Sherlock slurs in his false drunkenness, drawing out the last word. After a moment the window rolls down halfway.

"Sorry, mate, off duty," the cabbie says politely.

"Two two one," Sherlock says slowly as if he is too drunk to understand, pretending to stifle a burp, "B-Baker Street."

"I'm not on duty, mate. You see the light?" The cabbie says a bit irritably, pointing up to the roof.

"Jus' round the corner! It's Baker Street!" Sherlock slurs, wobbling around a bit unsteadily as if he can't quite manage flat pavement.

"There's plenty of other cabs round 'ere. Get another cab."

"Two-two-one B!" Sherlock pleads, an exact duplication of the actions of the entitled idiots he'd gone to Uni with, stumbling a bit against the side of the cab.

"I'm not on duty, an' I don't do drunks," the old man says with finality. Sherlock pretends to fully lose his balance and rolls along the side of the taxi until he is facing the rear of the vehicle. Reaching into his coat pocket, he takes out his phone and dials the victim's phone. He holds the phone to his ear as, inside the cab, another phone starts to ring.

"'ello?" Sherlock hears both from his own phone and from the cab window behind him.

"How do you make them take the poison?" Sherlock asks, dropping the act completely. Through the window, he can see John watching him in his moment of triumph. It makes him smile.

"What? What did ... what did you say?" Spinning around, Sherlock swiftly grabs at the cabbie's jacket with both hands to ensure he can't drive off.

"I said, how do you make them take the poison?" Sherlock asks again, his tone firm. He'd found the murderer, now he just needed to figure out how he'd done it.

"Oy! Who are you?" the elderly man asks.

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Do a lot of drugs, Sherlock 'olmes?" the cabbie asks. That is an odd question.

"Not in a while," he answers honestly, a bit confused by the sudden change of topic.

"I ask 'cause you're very resilient. Most people would have passed out by now." Sherlock blinks, looking down at his arm. He had thought it was pinched against the window glass, but something about the sensation isn't right. He reels away from the cab as he sees a hypodermic needle hanging from the underside of his left upper arm. He shouts wordlessly in shock, flailing as he tries to reach towards it to take it out. As the drug begins to take effect Sherlock feels his legs fold under him. The cabbie gets out and reassures nearby passers-by who have stopped to watch what's going on. "It's okay. He's just had a few," the old man explains as he manhandles Sherlock. Sherlock tries to wave his arm towards where he'd seen John watching, but whatever he'd been given was strong. The world is swiftly getting too hazy to keep track of, and he tries to call for John.

"Trouble is, your friends all think you're acting," the cabbie taunts him as he struggles to sit up, recognizing dimly that he is now in the back of the cab. The last things he is aware of before losing the fight with the sedative is the sound of the engine starting and the cabbie's voice from the front seat: "That's the thing about people. They're all stupid."


	5. Baker Street

**Baker Street**

Sherlock wakes slowly. Things are fuzzy, and being warm and fairly comfortable isn't helping him wake up. His scull comes into focus on the mantel above the lit hearth. Back in Baker street, in his own chair. Had John realized things had gone wrong and brought him home?

"I 'ope you don't mind. Well, you gave me your address," the voice of the cabbie drifts over his shoulder. Sherlock heaves himself out of the chair, fighting for equilibrium and nearly losing the battle as the older man continues. "You've only been out for about ten minutes. You're strong. I'm impressed." Sherlock manages to stand reasonably straight, holding his head up by propping his elbows on the mantel. " That's right – you warm yourself up. I made everything nice and cozy for you."

"This is my flat," he says weakly. Obvious, dull, but it should buy a bit of time talking while his head clears up.

"Course it is, yeah. Found your keys in your jacket. I thought, well, why not? People like to die at 'ome." There is the tinkle of keys dropping onto a table. Thinking that the room has stopped spinning so it might be safe to put all his weight onto his legs, he immediately loses his balance and crashes to the floor face down.

"Now, now. The drug's still in your system. You'll be weak as a kitten for at least an hour," the old cabbie sayas, walking over to loom over Sherlock as he tries to right himself. "I could do anything I wanted to you right now, Mr. 'olmes. Anything at all." Whimpering from the effort of fighting the drug, Sherlock manages to get up onto his knees and elbows. "But don't worry. I'm only gonna kill yer." Suddenly, he grabs Sherlock around the waist and hauls him to his feet before dragging him a few paces across the room and dumping him onto a wooden desk chair. The small wooden desk has another chair on the other side of it, a partner's desk he'd taken as payment after a simple inheritance-related case for when his clients have documents they want to review with him. Sherlock slumps forward onto the table but then he manages to sit up. He thinks of Mrs. Hudson and turns to reach vaguely towards the door behind him, mostly on instinct. The cabbie walks around the table towards the other chair.

"The whole 'ouse is empty. Even your landlady's away, so there's no point in raising your voice. We're all locked in, nice and snug," the condescending words drip from the man's mouth.

"Still, bit of a risk, isn't it? Here?" Sherlock says, his voice trembling. His mind is still fuzzy, and he is operating mostly on autopilot.

"You call that a risk?" hesays and reaches into both of his trouser pockets and takes out a small brown bottle from each of them. "This is a risk." Sherlock looks at him blankly. The cabbie puts the identical bottles onto the table in front of him, then unscrews the lid of the right-hand one and tips out one of several small capsules from inside it. Putting it onto the table in front of the bottle, he then picks up the left-hand bottle and takes out another identical capsule and puts it in front of that bottle. "You wanted to know 'ow I made 'em take the poison. You're gonna love this!"

"How?" Sherlock asks the obvious question. All he can think to do is to stall until he can stand well enough to get out and lock the man in while he calls Lestrade or come up with a better plan.

"Take a moment," the man says like he';s setting up a side-show at a circus. Sherlock sighs, utterly disgusted by the rediculous showmanship. "Get yourself together. I want your best game."

"My ... my best what?" He leans forward, but misjudges how well he can sit up straight and ends up laying his head down on one hand on the table. It is going to be a bit difficult to spot an opening while inspecting the woodgrain, but it was this or fall forward.

"I know who you are, Mr. 'olmes. The moment you said your name, I knew. Sherlock 'olmes," the cabbie says, wandering around the room and messing with Sherlock's belongings. "I've been on your website loads of times. You are brilliant." Tiredly, Sherlock manages to turn his head to look at him. "You are. Proper genius." Sherlock's head slumps down onto his hand again. The man is properly nuts, uncaring of who he hurts and only desiring the feeling of power he gets toying with his victims before death. The cabbie turns and walks back to the table.

"'The Science of Deduction.' Now that is proper thinking. Between you and me, why can't people think?" a hint of real anger comes into the man's placid and patronizing voice, his face scrunching. "Don't it drive you mad? Why can't people just think?"

"Oh, I see," Sherlock says, his words slurred as he watches the man from his sideways perspective. He points a finger towards the cabbie, which wavers drunkenly. "So you're a proper genius too."

"Don't look it, do I? Funny little man, drives a cab. But you'll know better in a minute. Chances are it'll be the last thing you ever know," the cabbie says smugly. Sherlock finally gets his head up and glares up at the man.

"Who are you?"

"Nobody. For now, but I won't die a nobody, now will I?" Sherlock can't argue with that, and tiredly leans back in his seat. He blows out a long breath through his nose, trying to concentrate. Having gathered himself as much as he can, he points to the capsules on the table.

"Two pills."

"There's a good pill and a bad pill. You take the good pill, you live; take the bad pill, you die."

"And you know which is which," Sherlock adds quickly.

"Course I know."

"But I don't."

"Wouldn't be a game if you knew. You're the one who chooses," the elderly cabbie keeps up the rapid-fire explanation.

"It's not a game. It's chance."

"I've played four times. I'm alive. It's not chance, Mr. 'olmes, it's chess. It's a game of chess, with one move, and one survivor. And this ... this is the move." With his right hand he slides the right-hand pill across the table towards Sherlock, then pulls his hand back and leaves the pill where it is.

"Did I just give you the good pill or the bad pill? You can choose either one." The words are delivered casually, almost lazily after the last bit of rapid speech. Sherlock looks at him for a long moment.

"That's what you did, to all of them. You gave them a choice," Sherlock realizes. There has to be some catch or trick.

"You've gotta admit, as serial killers go I'm verging on nice! Anyway, time's up. Choose."

"And then?"

"And then, together, we take our medicine," he says expectantly and licks his lips. "Let's play."

"Play what? It's a fifty-fifty chance," Sherlock says, leaning forward onto his elbow, not keen on another face-plant no matter how gracefully he managed the second one.

"You're not playin' the numbers, you're playin' me. Did I just give you the good pill or the bad pill?" Sherlock blinks slowly, feeling slow. He hates feeling slow, even with the drug to blame.

"Is it a bluff? Or a double-bluff? Or a triple-bluff?"

"It's still chance," Sherlock argues, shaking his head hoping to clear it.

"Five people in a row? It's not chance."

"It's luck."

"It's genius. I know 'ow people think. I know 'ow people think I think. I can see it all, like a map in my 'ead." Sherlock turns his head away, looking exasperated. "Everyone's so stupid – even you." Sherlock looks back at the man sharply, but his head is still stuffed with the sort of drugs he has never enjoyed and he can't help feeling that he's missing something obvious. He drops his gaze too quickly, the clues he'd observed about the man's life floating uselessly in the murky soup filling his mind.

"Course, maybe God just loves me."

"Either way, you're wasted as a cabbie," he tries some flattery. Rubbing his fingers across his chin, he drops his hand but is now strong enough to keep his head up. He looks at the cabbie. "How did you choose which ones?"

"Anyone who didn't know where they were going, 'cause they were drunk or lost or new in town," he chuckles. "Anyone I could walk through the wrong door."

"You risked your life five times just to kill strangers," Sherlock says with a frown. "You're dying, aren't you?" The cabbie's eyes flicker but he manages to hold Sherlock's gaze.)

"So are you."

"You don't have long, though. Am I right?"

"Aneurysm," the cabbie confirms with a smile. He lifts his right hand and taps the side of his head. Sherlock smiles in satisfaction. "Right in 'ere. Any breath could be my last. It's your own 'ope, Mr. 'olmes. Bet on the aneurysm."

"I'm not a betting man."

"D'you think I'm bitter?"

"Well, you have just murdered five people," he answers sarcastically.

"I've outlived five people. That's the most fun you can 'ave with an aneurysm," the cabbie says, leaning forward like he is sharing a secret. Outside in the street, a vehicle can be heard coming to a halt with a screech of brakes. The flashing lights of a police car come through the window. Sherlock's gaze flickers briefly to the window but then he turns his attention back to the cabbie.

"What if I refuse to play?" Sherlock asks.

"Then I choose for you, and I force it down your throat. Right now, there's nothing you could do to stop me." Sherlock blinks at this, aware that he is probably too weak to fend the man off. Just then the landline phone begins to ring. "Funnily enough, noone's ever gone for that option. And I don't think you will either." Sherlock looks across to the phone.

"Especially as that's the police," he says with some relief.

"I know." He turns his head to glance over his shoulder at the flashing lights reflecting on the window pane. "I'm not blind."

"Good old Doctor Watson. I underestimated him," Sherlock says. In the mirror above the mantel he catches sight of the wistful smile on his face. That will never do. He turns in his chair and prepares to stand up.

"You make the slightest move towards that phone, I'll kill yer."

"Oh, I don't think so. Not your kind of murder," Sherlock says as he slowly hauls himself to his feet, then looking down at the cabbie and smiling.

"You wanna risk it?" The phone stops ringing. The cabbie nods down to the pills. "Wouldn't you rather risk this?" The phone beeps as it goes to voicemail. Sherlock looks down at the pills thoughtfully. "Which one do you think? Which one's the good pill?" Sherlock blinks, trying to drag his eyes away from the pills but finds himself unable to, too tempted by the challenge. "Come on. I know you've got a theory." Sherlock raises his gaze and the two men lock eyes. After a few seconds Sherlock looks down to the pills again and raises his hand, his fist clenched above the table for a moment before he extends his arm and points to the pill on the cabbie's left, the one which wasn't pushed across the table towards him. The cabbie looks at the pill with interest, but his voice gives nothing away as he speaks.

"Oh. Interesting." He reaches out and slides the left-hand pill across the table while pulling the righthand one back towards himself. Releasing the left-hand one, he picks up the other pill and looks at Sherlock.

"So, what d'you think? Shall we?" Sherlock sinks into the chair. His focus is entirely on the man in front of him. "Really, what do you think? Can you beat me?" Sherlock blinks several times, his head still swimming a little, but reasonably certain of the bluff. He lowers his gaze and picks up the pill in front of him. Both men prop their elbow on the table, holding their pill a few inches from their mouth. "I bet you get bored, don't you? A man like you, so clever. I'll bet you're not bored now." Sherlock's gaze drops to the pill in his hand and he begins to breathe heavily in anticipation. It is a thrill, and the adrenaline has cut through the haze in his head. This is the right one, he's smarter than this man - he's caught this man. He beat him once tonight and he can do it again. "This ... this right now – this is what you live for, innit, not being bored?" Sherlock continues to breathe heavily, his gaze locked on the pill. Slowly he begins to move the pill closer to his mouth. The cabbie matches the movement with his own pill, his eyes fixed on Sherlock who opens his mouth as the pill gets nearer.

Just as the pill reaches Sherlock's mouth a gunshot rings out and the window behind the cabbie shatters as a bullet impacts his chest, then goes through his body and smashes into the wall behind Sherlock. As the cabbie slumps forward onto the table, dropping his pill, Sherlock drops his own pill and scrambles back onto his feet in shock. Staring down at the dead man for a moment, he then hurries over to the window as police sirens begin to sound outside. Down in the street another police car screeches to a halt and Inspector Lestrade jumps out of the passenger seat, calling out to the other police officers already gathered.

"Did anyone see it? Where did it come from? Who is firing? Who is firing?" Sherlock looks across the road to the building opposite. Most of them are in darkness but one room is well lit, and the sash window is slightly open. "Clear the area! Clear the area now!" Sherlock turns back and looks again at the dead cabbie, then turns and looks across to the open window opposite. Moving as quickly as he can, he chucks his keys out the smashed window and looks down as pandemonium continues down in the street below, panting slightly as reality re-asserts itself and his brain finally kicks out how the game is rigged. One of the officers scoops up his keys and shouts, pointing up at him. He slumps down, first leaning on the window frame and then crunching onto the floor amid the glass, closing his eyes.


End file.
